The truth was never preached by the Buddha, seeing that you have to realize it within yourself. To understand the misery and confusion that exist within ourselves, and so in the world, we must first find clarity within ourselves, and that clarity comes about through right thinking. This clarity is not to be organized, for it cannot be exchanged with another. Organized group thought is merely repetitive. Clarity is not the result of verbal assertion, of intense self-awareness and right thinking. Right thinking is not the outcome of or mere cultivation of the intellect, not is it conformity to pattern, however worthy and noble. Right thinking comes with self-knowledge. Without understanding yourself, you have no basis for thought; without self-knowledge, what you think is not true. There is hope in men, not in society, not in systems, organized religious systems, but in you and me. What you are repeating is not the truth It is a lie; for truth cannot be repeated. It is through self-knowledge, not through belief in somebody else’s symbols, that a man comes to the external reality, in which his being is grounded. Belief inevitably separates. If you have a belief, or when you seek security in your particular belief, you become separated from those who seek security in some other form of belief. All organized beliefs are based on separation, though they may preach brotherhood. The man who has successfully solved the problem of his relations with the two worlds of data and symbols, is a man who has no beliefs. With regard to the problems of practical life, he entertains a series of working hypotheses, which serve his purposes, but are taken no more seriously than any other kind of tool or instrument. “Men of good will should not have formulas; for formulas lead, inevitably, only to blind thinking. Our system of upbringing is based upon what to think, not how to think. If you respond to a challenge according to the old conditioning, your response will not enable you to understand the new challenge. What one has to do, in order to meet the new challenge, is to strip oneself completely, denude oneself entirely of the background and meet the challenge anew. It is only through creative understanding of ourselves that there can be a creative world, a happy world, a world in which ideas do not exist. A world in which ideas do not exist would be a happy world, because it would be a world without the powerful conditioning forces which compel men to undertake inappropriate action, a world without the hallowed dogmas in terms of which the world crimes are justified, the greatest follies elaborately rationalized. The very idea of leading somebody is anti-social and anti-spiritual. I am not acting as your guru, because, first of all, I am not giving you any gratification. I am not telling you what you should do from moment to moment, or from day to day, but I am just pointing out something to you; you can take it or leave it, depending on you, not on me. In order to find the solution, the mind must open itself to reality, must confront the given ness of the outer and inner worlds without preconceptions or restrictions. If you are aware without domination or justification, you will see that, by merely looking at that thought, no other thought intrudes. It is only when you condemn, compare, approximate, that other thoughts enter in. If you love, you may do what you will. But if you start by doing what you will, or by doing what you don’t will in obedience to some traditional system or notions, ideals and prohibitions, you will never love. Through choiceless awareness, as it penetrates the successive layers of the ego and its associated sub-conscious, will come live and understanding, but of another order than that with which we are ordinarily familiar. Knowledge is an affair of symbols and is, all too often, a hinderance to wisdom, to the uncovering of the self from moment to moment. Love is neither personal nor impersonal. Love is love, not to be defined or described by the mind as exclusive or inclusive. Love is it’s own eternity; it is the real, the supreme, the immeasurable. To be able really to listen, one should abandon or put aside all prejudices, pre-formulations and daily activities. You are listening when your real attention is given to something. Unfortunately most of us listen through a screen of resistance. Therefore, we listen really to our own noise, to our own sound, not to what is being said. To know that one is in a certain condition, in a certain state, is already a process of liberation; but a man who is not aware of his condition, of his struggle, tries to be something other than he is, which brings about habit. It need an extraordinarily astute mind, and extraordinarily pliable heart, to be aware of and to follow what is; because what is is constantly moving, constantly undergoing a transformation, and if the mind is tethered to belief, to knowledge, it ceases to pursue, it ceases ti follow the swift movement of what is. Follow the thought which is active in you. Giving more and more significance to the values of the senses brings about confusion; and, being in confusion, we try to escape from it through various forms, whether religious, economic or social, or through ambition, through power, through the search for reality. A system cannot transform man; man always transforms the system, which history shows. Understanding is now, not tomorrow. Tomorrow is for the lazy mind, the sluggish mind, the mind that is not interested. When you are interested in something, you do it instantaneously, there is immediate understanding, immediate transformation. If you do not change now, you will never change, because the change that takes place tomorrow is merely a modification, it is not transformation. Transformation can only take place immediately; the revolution is now, not tomorrow. When that happens, you are completely without a problem, for then the self is not worried about itself; then you are beyond the wave of destruction. Most of us are seeking some kind of happiness, some kind of peace; in a world that is ridden with turmoil, wars, contention, strife, we want a refuge where there can be some peace. Happiness is derivative; it is a byproduct of something else. So, before we give our minds and hearts to something which demands a great deal of earnestness, attention, thought, care, we must find out, what is it that we are seeking; whether it is happiness, or gratification. We want permanent pleasure, permanent gratification—which we call truth, God or what you will. So long as I am ignorant of myself, so long as I am unaware of the total process of myself, i have no basis for thought, for affection, for action. What we are, the world is. Before we set out on a journey to find reality, to find God, before we can act, before we can have any relationship with another, which is society, it is essential that we begin to understand ourselves first. Without knowing yourself, without knowing your own way of thinking and why you think certain things, without knowing the background of your conditioning and why you have certain beliefs about art and religion, about your country and your neighbor and about yourself, how can you think truly about anything?. The difficulty is that we are so impatient; we want to get on, we want to reach an end, and so we have neither the time nor the occasion to give ourselves the opportunity to study, to observe. Self-knowledge has no end—you don’t come to an achievement, you don’t come to a conclusion. If one is able to understand oneself, and thereby bring about that creative happiness, that experiencing of something that is not if the mind, then perhaps there can be a transformation in the immediate relationship about us and so in the world in which we live. A mind that wishes to understand a problem must not only understand the problem completely, wholly, but must be able to follow it swiftly, because the problem is never static. Any crisis is always new; therefore, to understand it, a mind must always be fresh, clear, swift in its pursuit. What you are, what you think, and what you feel, what you do in your everyday existence, is projected outwardly, and that constitutes the world. Because of the relationship between yourself and myself, between myself and another in society—society is the product of our relationship—and if our relationship is confused, egocentric, narrow, limited, national, we project that and bring chaos into the world. What you are, the world is. If you and I were only concerned with livelihood we should find the right means of earning it, a means not based on envy. Envy is one of the most destructive factors in relationship because envy indicates the desire for power, for position, and it ultimately leads to politics. If we were both equal in thought, in feeling, there would be no respect, there would be no ill-will, because we would be two individuals meeting, not as disciple and teacher, nor as the husband dominating the wife, nor as the wife dominating the husband. When there is ill-will there is a desire to dominate which arouses jealousy, anger, passion, all of which in our relationship creates constant conflict from which we try to escape, and this produces further chaos, further misery. Stupidity is the giving of wrong values to those things which the mind creates, or to those things which the hands produce. Most of our thoughts spring from the self protective instinct. Belief divides people. It doesn’t unite people. Revolution in society must begin with the inner, psychological transformation of the individual. One of the fundamental causes of the disintegration of society is imitation, and one of the disintegrating factors is the leader, whose very essence is imitation. Since our whole mental, psychological make-up is based on authority, there must be freedom from authority, to be creative. The world is not something separate from you and me; the world, society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish between each other. However small may be the world we live in, if we can transform ourselves, bring about a radically different point of view in our daily existence, then perhaps we shall affect the world at large, the extended relationship with others. You cannot live in isolation. Real revolution is not according to any particular pattern, either of the left or of the right, but it is a revolution of values. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, and therefore the beginning of transformation or regeneration. Discontent, instead of setting us aflame, causing us to question life, the whole process of existence, is canalized, and thereby we become mediocre, losing that drive, that intensity to find out the whole significance of existence. One must know oneself as one is, not as one wishes to be which is merely an ideal and therefore fictitious, unreal. To know oneself as one is required an extraordinary alertness of mind, because what is is constantly undergoing transformation, change, and to follow it swiftly the mind must not be tethered to any particular dogma or belief, to any particular pattern of action. Beliefs and ideals only give you a color, preventing true perception. To pursue an ideal away from what is is an escape; it prevents you from discovering snd acting directly upon what you are. Virtue is freedom. Reality can be found only in understanding what is; and to understand what is, there must be freedom, freedom from the fear of what is. If we begin to condemn what is, if we begin to blame or resist it, then we shall not understand its movement. If I want to understand somebody, I cannot condemn him: I must observe, study him. I must love the very thing I M studying. If we merely accumulate knowledge of the self, that very knowledge prevents further understanding, because accumulated knowledge and experience becomes the center through which thought focuses and has its being. Under the shelter of an authority, a guide, you may have temporarily a sense of security, a sense of well-being, but that is not the understanding of the total process of oneself. Authority in its very nature prevents the full awareness of oneself and therefore ultimately destroys freedom; in freedom alone can there be creativeness. Because we want to be inwardly secure, we are constantly seeking methods and means for this security, and thereby we create authority, the worship of another, which destroys comprehension, that spontaneous tranquility of mind in which alone there can be a state of creativeness. That state of creativeness comes only when the self, which is the process of recognition and accumulation, ceases to be; because, after all, consciousness as the ‘me’ is the centre of recognition, and recognition is merely the process of the accumulation of experience. If we can understand ourselves as we are from moment to moment without the process of accumulation, then we shall see how there comes a tranquility that is not a product of the mind, a tranquility that is neither imagined nor cultivated; and only in that state of tranquility can there be creativeness. We live by action and without action there is no life, there is no experience, there is no thinking. Thought is action; and merely to pursue action at one particular level of consciousness, which is the outer, merely to be caught up in outward action without understanding the whole process of action itself, will inevitably lead us to frustration, to misery. Consciousness is experiencing, naming, and recording. Consciousness is action; and without challenge, response, without experiencing, naming, or terming, without recording, which is memory, there is no action. Action creates the actor. The actor comes into being when action has a result, an end in view. Action towards a result is will. The desire to achieve an end brings about will, which is the actor. In the moment of experiencing, you are not aware of yourself as the experienced apart from the experience; you are in a state of experiencing. We are in this state repeatedly, in the state of experiencing; but we always come out of it and give it a term, naming and recording it, and thereby giving continuity to becoming. Ideas breed further ideas, and when there is merely the breeding of ideas there is antagonism, and society becomes top-heavy with the intellectual process of ideation. Our social structure is very intellectual; we are cultivating the intellect at the expense of every other factor of our being and therefore we are suffocated with ideas. It is extraordinarily important for us to understand that if an idea shapes action, then action can never bring about the solution to our miseries because, before it can be put into action, we have to first discover how the idea comes into being. The idea is the result of the thought process, the thought process is the response of memory, and memory is always conditioned. An action based on experience is limiting, and therefore a hindrance. There is action independent of experience when the mind is not controlling action. That is the only state in which there is understanding: when the mind, based on experience, is not guiding action: when thought, based on experience, is not shaping action. Ideas cease only when there is love. Love is not memory. Love is not experience. Love is not the thinking about the person that one loves, for then it is merely thought. You cannot think of love. Idea is always old, casting its shadow on the present and we are ever trying to build a bridge between action and idea. When there is love—which is not me ration, which is not ideation, which is not memory, which is not the outcome of an experience, of a practiced discipline—then that very love is action. It doesn’t matter whose ideas they are, whether from the left or from the extreme right. So long as we cling to ideas, we are in a state in which there can be no experiencing at all. Ideas are not truth; and truth is something that must be experienced directly, from moment to moment. Believes do create conflict, confusion, and antagonism yet we are unwilling to give them up. A cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs, with dogmas, with assertions, with quotations, is really an in creative mind; it is merely a repetitive mind. A belief, religious or political, obviously hinders the understanding of ourselves. It acts as a screen through which we are looking at ourselves. If we have no beliefs with which the mind has identified itself, then the mind, without identification, is capable of looking at itself as it is—and then, surely, there is the beginning of the understanding of oneself. The more thoughtful, the more awake, the more alert are perhaps the less believing. That is because belief binds, belief isolates; and we see that is so throughout the world. A man who wants peace and who wants to create a new world, a happy world, surely cannot isolate himself through any form of belief. A man of peace, a man who would really understand the whole process of human existence, cannot be bound by a belief. My problem is not that I should believe this or that but that I should free myself from the desire to be secure. Can you as an individual be free from this urge, this craving to be secure, which expresses itself in the desire to believe in something? If we are not free of all that, we are a source of contention; we are not peacemaking; we have no love in our hearts. Can the mind free itself from belief— not find a substitute for it but be entirely free from it?. When you analyze and look at “I know” more intelligently and carefully, you will find that the very assumption “I know” is another wall separating you and me. Behind that wall you take refuge, seeking comfort, security. Therefore the more knowledge a mind is burdened with, the less capable it is of understanding. Ambition is one of the qualities that destroy relationships, that put man against man. If we would live at peace with each other, surely ambition must completely come to an end—not only political, economic, social ambition, but also the more subtle and pernicious ambition, the spiritual ambition—to be something. Unfortunately, every time you see something new you bring in all the information known to you already, all your knowledge, all your past memories, and obviously you become incapable of looking, incapable of receiving anything that is new, that is not of the old. We are not capable of facing that inward insecurity, that inward sense of being alone. We want something to lean on, whether it is the State, whether it is the caste, whether it is nationalism, whether it is a Master or a Saviour or anything else. When we see the falseness of all of this, the mind then is capable—it may be temporarily for a second—of seeing the truth of it; even though when it is too much for it, it goes back. Mind, as we know it, has belief behind it, has desire, the urge to be secure, knowledge, and accumulation of strength. If, with all its power and superiority, one cannot think for oneself, there can be no peace in the world. A mind that would be in a state in which the new can take place—whether it be the truth, whether it be God, or what you will—must surely cease to acquire, to gather; it must put aside all knowledge. A mind burdened with knowledge cannot possible understand, surely, that which is real, which is not measurable. Joy does not come through suppression, through control or indulgence. You may indulge but there is bitterness at the end. Happiness does not come through effort, nor joy through control and suppression; and still all our life is a series of suppression’s, a series of controls, a series of regretful indulgences. Does not effort mean a struggle to change what is into what is not, or into what it should be or should become?. We are constantly struggling to avoid facing what is, or we are trying to get away from it or to transform or modify what is. A man who is truly content is the man who understands what is, gives the right significance to what is. That is true contentment; it is not concerned with having few or many possessions but with the understanding of the whole significance of what is; and that can only come when you recognize what is, when you are aware of it, not when you are trying to modify it or change it. You may build with great care a marvelous society, using the infinite knowledge science has given us. But so long as the psychological strife and struggle and battle are not understood and the psychological overtones and currents are not overcome, the structure of society, however marvelously build, is bound to crash, as has happened over and over again. You may build with great care a marvelous society, using the infinite knowledge science has given us. But so long as the psychological strife and struggle and battle are not understood and the psychological overtones and currents are not overcome, the structure of society, however marvelously build, is bound to crash, as has happened over and over again. Distraction, which is effort, must exist so long as psychologically I wish to transform what is into something it is not. You create when there is no effort, when you are completely open, when on all levels you are in complete communication, completely integrated. Is creativeness a sense of total self-forgetfulness, that sense when there is no turmoil, when one is wholly unaware of the movement of thought, when there is only a complete, full, rich being?. As our lives are mostly a series of battles, conflicts, and struggles, we cannot imagine a life, a state of being, in which strife has fully created. I am this, and I want to become that; I am not that, and I must become that. In becoming “that,” there is strife, there is battle, conflict, struggle. In this struggle we are concerned inevitably with fulfillment through the gaining of an end; we seek self fulfillment in an object, in a person, in an idea, and that demands constant battle, struggle, the effort to become, to fulfill.. The desire to fulfill, to become something, arises when there is awareness of being nothing. Because I am nothing, because I am insufficient, empty, inwardly poor, I struggle to becoming something; outwardly or inwardly I struggle to fulfill myself in a person, in a thing, in an idea. To fill that void is the whole process of our existence. Being aware that we are empty, inwardly poor, we struggle either to collect things outwardly, or cultivate inward riches. Effort exists only so long as we are trying to avoid that inward loneliness, emptiness, but when we look at it, observe it, when we accept what is without avoidance, we will find there comes a state of being in which all strife ceases. That state of being is creativeness and it is not the result of strife. When there is understanding of what is, which is emptiness, inward insufficiency, when one lives with that insufficiency and understands it fully, there comes creative reality, creative intelligence, which alone bring happiness. It is only if you are aware of inward insufficiency and live with it without escape, accepting it wholly, that you will discover an extraordinary tranquility, which is not put together, made up, but a tranquility which comes with understanding of what is. This contradiction, this opposition in us, must be understood because it creates conflict; and in conflict, in struggle, we cannot create individually. There is contradiction, so there must be struggle; and struggle is destruction, waste. In that state we can produce nothing but antagonism, strife, more bitterness and sorrow. If we can understand this fully and hence be free of contradiction, then there can be inward peace, which will bring understanding of each other. I think I have a permanent desire, I posit in myself a permanent desire and another desire arises which contradicts it; this contradiction brings about conflict, which is waste. Why not look at life not as one permanent desire but as a series of fleeting desires always in opposition to each other?. If I regard life not as a permanent desire but as a series of temporary desires which are constantly changing, then there is no contradiction. There is no fixed point in desire; but the mind establishes a fixed point because it treats everything as a means to arrive, to gain; and there must be contradiction, conflict, as long as one is arriving. You want to arrive, you want to succeed, you want to find an ultimate God or truth which will be your permanent satisfaction. You are not seeking truth, you are not seeking God. You are seeking lasting gratification, and that gratification you clothe with an idea, a respectable-sounding word such as God, truth; but actually we are all seeking gratification, and we place that gratification, that satisfaction, at the highest point, calling it God, and the lowest point is drink. So long as the mind is seeking gratification, there is not much difference between God and drink. Socially,drink may be bad; but the inward desire for gratification, for gain, is even more harmful, is it not?. So long as we think in terms of time, in terms of achievement, in terms of position, there must be contradiction. After all, the mind is the product of time. Thought is based on yesterday, on the past; and so long as thought is functioning within the field of time, thinking is terms of the future, of becoming, gaining, achieving, there must be contradiction, because then we are incapable of facing exactly what is. Only in realizing, in understanding, in being choicelessly aware of what is, is there a possibility of freedom from that disintegrating factor which is contradiction. Thought itself has become a contradiction because we have not understood the total process of ourselves; and that understanding is possible only when we are fully aware of our thought, not as an observer operating upon this thought, but integrally and without choice—which is extremely arduous. Then only is there the dissolution of that contradiction which is so detrimental, so painful. So long as we are trying to achieve a psychological result, so long as we want inward security, there must be a contradiction in our life. On the contrary, contradiction gives us an impetus to live; the very element of friction makes us feel that we are alive. The effort, the struggle of contradiction, gives us a sense of vitality. Quietness of mind is essential to understand the whole significance of life. Thought can never be tranquil; thought, which is the product of time, can never find that which is timeless, can never know that which is beyond time. So long as thought, which is the product of the past, tries to eliminate contradiction and all the problems that it creates, it is merely pursuing a result, trying to achieve an end, and such thinking only creates more contradiction and hence conflict, misery and confusion in us and, therefore, about us. To be free of contradiction, one must be aware of the present, without choice. Self-knowledge is the beginning of understanding; without self-knowledge, contradiction and conflict will continue. To know the whole process, the totality of oneself, does not require any expert, any authority. The pursuit of authority only breeds fear. No expert, no specialist, can show us how to understand the process of the self. One has to study it for oneself. You and I can help each other by talking about it, but none can unfold it for us, no specialist, no teacher, can explore it for us. So long as there is a pattern of thought, contradiction will continue; to put an end to the pattern, and so to contradiction, there must be self-knowledge. This understanding of the self is not a a process reserved for the few. The self is to be understood in our everyday speech, in the way we think and feel, in the way we look at another. If we can be aware of every thought, of every feeling, from moment to moment, then we shall see that in relationship the ways of the self are understood. Then only is there a possibility of that tranquility of mind in which alone the ultimate reality can come into being. The self is dividing; the self is self-enclosing: it’s activities, however Nobel, are separative and isolating. We also know those extraordinary moments when the self is not there, in which there is no sense of endeavor, of effort, and which happens when there is love. Creation is when the self is not there, because creation is not intellectual, is not of the mind, is not self-projected, is something beyond all experiencing. Any movement of the mind, positive or negative, is an experience which actually strengthens the ‘me’. When the mind seeks a timeless spiritual state which will go into action in order to destroy the self, is that not another form of experience which is strengthening the ‘me’? When you believe, is that not what is actually taking place?. When you recognize that every movement of the mind is merely a form of strengthening the self, when you observe it, see it, when you are completely aware of it in action, when you come to that point—not ideologically, verbally, not through projected experiencing, but then you are actually in that state—then you will see that the mind, being utterly still, has no power of creating. Whatever the mind creates us in a circle, within the field of the self. When the mind is non-creating there is creation, which is not a recognizable process. When the mind seeks a timeless spiritual state which will go into action in order to destroy the self, is that not another form of experience which is strengthening the ‘me’? When you believe, is that not what is actually taking place?. Reality, truth, is not to be recognized. For truth to come, belief, knowledge, experiencing, the pursuit of virtue—all this must go. The virtuous person who is conscious of pursuing virtue can never find reality. He may be a very decent person; but that is entirely different from being a man of truth, a man who understands. A virtuous man is a righteous man, and a righteous man can never understand what is truth because virtue to him is the covering of the self, the strengthening of the self, because he is pursuing virtue. When he says “I must be without greed”, the state of non-greed which he experiences only strengthens the self. That is why it is important to be poor, not only in the things of the world but also in belief and in knowledge. A man with worldly riches or a man rich in knowledge snd belief will never know anything but darkness, and will he the centre of all mischief and misery. Love is not of the self. Self cannot recognize love. When you know love, self is not. When there is love, self is not. Fear is always related to the known, not to the unknown. Knowledge is having ideas, having opinions about things, having a sense of continuity as in relation to the known, and no more. Ideas are memories, the result of experience, which is response to challenge. I am afraid of the known, which means I am afraid of losing people, things, or ideas, I am afraid of discovering what I am, afraid of being at a loss, afraid of the pain which might come into being when I have lost or have not gained or have no more pleasure. Physical pain is a nervous response, but psychological pain arises when I hold on to things that give me satisfaction, for then I am afraid of anyone or anything that may take them away from me. Sorrow is the very process of accumulating to ward off psychological pain. Fear exists so long as there is accumulation of the known, which creates the fear of losing. Wherever there is a desire for self-protection, there is fear. In accumulation there is pain. Fear exists in the process of accumulation and belief in something is part of the accumulative process. In the very process of believing, there is doubt. Outwardly I accumulate things, and bring war; inwardly I accumulate beliefs, and bring pain. Fear comes into being when I desire to be in a particular pattern. To live without fear means to live without a particular pattern. When I demand a particular way of living that in itself is a source of fear. The frame is causing fear and the fear is strengthening the frame. Identification is process of self-forgetfulness. So long as I am conscious of the ‘me’ I know there is pain, there is struggle, there is constant fear. But if I can identify myself with something greater, with something worth while, with beauty, with life, with truth, with belief, with knowledge, at least temporarily, there is an escape from the ‘me’, is there not?. The man who pursues virtue is escaping from the self and he has a narrow mind. That is not a virtuous mind, for virtue is something which cannot be pursued. Fear is the non-acceptance of what is. Don’t yo know when the body is perfectly healthy there is a certain joy, well-being; and don’t you know when the mind is completely free, without any block, when the centre of recognition as the ‘me’ is not there, you experience a certain joy?. It requires a great deal of intelligence to be simple and not merely conform to a particular pattern, however worthy outwardly. It is comparatively easy to have few things and to be satisfied with few things; to be content with little and perhaps to share that little with others. Simplicity which is fundamental, real, can only come into being inwardly; and from that there is an outward expression. A sensitive mind, a sensitive heart, is essential, for then it is capable of quick perception, quick reception. Most of us like to be held—by people, by possessions, by ideas. We like to be prisoners. Inwardly we are prisoners, though outwardly we seem to be very simple. Inwardly we are prisoners to our desires, to our wants, to our ideals, to innumerable motivations. Simplicity cannot be found unless one is free inwardly. Therefore it must begin inwardly, not outwardly. When there is freedom from beliefs, there is simplicity. But that simplicity requires intelligence, and to be intelligent one must be aware of one’s own impediments. To be aware, one must be constantly on the watch, not established in any particular groove, in any particular pattern of thought or action. After all, what one is inwardly does affect the outer. Society, or any form of action, is the projection of ourselves, and without transforming inwardly mere legislation has very little significance outwardly; it may bring about certain reforms, certain adjustments, but what one is inwardly always overcomes the outer. A mind that is not sensitive, not alert, not aware, is incapable of any receptivity, any creative action. Conformity as a means of making ourselves simple really makes the mind and heart dull, insensitive. Compulsion of any kind can never lead to simplicity. On the contrary, the more you suppress, the more you substitute, the more you sublimate, the less there is simplicity, but the more you understand the process of sublimation, suppression, substitution, the greater the possibility of being simple. Our problems—social, environmental, political, religious—are so complex that we can solve them only by being simple, not by becoming extraordinarily erudite and clever. A simple person sees much more directly, has a more direct experience, than the complex person. Our minds are so crowded with an infinite knowledge of facts, of what others have said, that we have become incapable of being simple and having direct experience ourselves. Simplicity comes only through self-knowledge, through understanding ourselves; the ways of our thinking and feeling; the movement of our thoughts; our responses; how we conform, through fear, to public opinion, to what others say, what the Buddha, the Christ, the great saints have said—all of which indicates our nature to conform, to be safe, to be secure. When one is seeking security, one is obviously in a state of fear and therefore there is no simplicity. . Without being simple, one cannot be sensitive—to the trees, to the birds, to the mountains, to the wind, to all the things which are going on about us in the world; if one is not simple one cannot be sensitive to the inward intimation of things. To be simple in the whole, total process of our consciousness is extremely arduous; because there must be no inward reservation, there must be an eagerness to find out, to inquire into the process of our being; which means to be awake to every intimation, to every hint; to be aware of our fears, of our hopes, and to investigate and to be free of them more and more and more. Only then, when the mind and the heart are really simple, not encrusted, are we able to solve the many problems that confront us. One must have the capacity to investigate all these things anew; because it is only through direct experience that our problems are solved, and to have direct experience there must be simplicity, which means there must be sensitivity. A mind is made dull by the past, by the future. Only a mind that is capable of adjusting itself to the present, continually, from moment to moment, can meet the powerful influences and pressures constantly put upon us by our environment. The one who is inwardly simple, who is not becoming anything is capable of extraordinary receptivity, because there is no barrier, there is no fear, there is no going towards something; therefore it is capable of receiving grace, God, truth, or what you will. It is only when a mind is really sensitive, alert, aware of all its own happenings, responses, thoughts, when it is no longer becoming, is no longer shaping itself to be something—only then is it capable of receiving that which is truth. It is only then that there can be happiness, for happiness is not an end—it is the result of reality. When the mind and the heart have become simple and therefore sensitive—not through any form of compulsion, direction, or imposition—then we shall see that our problems can be tackled very simply. However complex our problems, we shall be able to approach them freshly and see them differently. That is what is wanted at the present time: people who are capable of meeting this outward confusion, turmoil, antagonism anew, creatively, simply. We cannot approach a problem anew if we are thinking in terms of certain patterns of thought, religious, political or otherwise. Humility that is gained ceases to be humility. A mind that makes itself humble is no longer a humble mind. It is only when one has humility, not a cultivated humility, that one is able to meet the things of life that are so pressing, because then one is not important, one doesn't look through one's own pressures and sense of importance; one looks at the problem for itself and then one is able to solve it. When you are aware, you see the whole process of your thinking and action; but it can happen only when there is no condemnation. When I condemn something, I do not understand it, and it is one way of avoiding any kind of understanding. We do not know how to look at a problem dispassionately. We are not capable of it, unfortunately, because we want a result from the problem, we want an answer, we are looking to an end; or we try to translate the problem according to our pleasure or pain; or we have an answer already on how to deal with the problem. Therefore we approach a problem, which is always new, with the old pattern. The challenge is always new, but our response is always the old; and our difficulty is to meet the challenge adequately, that is fully. To be aware that we are not passive is the beginning. What is important is to be aware without choice, because choice brings about conflict. The chooser is in confusion, therefore he chooses; if he is not in confusion, there is no choice. Desire is sensation with the object of its attainment. In desire there is resistance and a yielding, which involves temptation; and of course in yielding to a particular symbol of desire there is always the fear of frustration. The more I am frustrated, the more strength I give to the ‘me’. So long as there is hoping, longing, there is always the background of fear, which again strengthens that centre. And revolution is possible only at that centre, not on the surface, which is merely a process of distraction, a superficial change leading to mischievous action. My mind is the mechanical instrument of sensation, of memory, a dead centre from which I act, think. The objects I pursue are the projections of the mind as symbols from which it derives sensations. So long as the mind is seeking further experience it can only think in terms of sensation; and any experience that may be spontaneous, creative, vital, strikingly new, it immediately reduces to sensation and pursuers that sensation, which then becomes a memory. Why begin at the superficial level of giving up outward possessions when your mind is crippled with innumerable wants, innumerable desires, beliefs, struggles?. The mind cannot experience anything new, it is incapable of experiencing anything new, because it’s approach is always through memory, through recognition; and that which is recognized through memory is not truth, creation, reality. The wanting more, the pursuit of symbols, words, images, with their sensation—all that has to come to an end. Only then is it possible for the nine to be in that state of creativeness in which the new can always come into being. The mind is capable of receiving the new and that the new is never a sensation; therefore it can never a sensation; therefore it can never be recognized, re-experienced. It is a state of being in which creativeness comes without invitation, without memory; and that is reality. Life is experience, experience in relationship. One cannot live in isolation; so life is relationship and relationship is action. Life is relationship, which is expressed through contact with things, with people, and with ideas. You exist only in relationship; otherwise you do not exist, existence had no meaning. You exist because you are related; and it is the lack of understanding of relationship that causes conflict. We would rather idealize, escape, we would rather live in the future than understand that relationship in the immediate present. A man who is affectionate, who is kindly, has no sense of power, and therefore such a man is not bound to any nationality, to any flag. He has no flag. The desire to identify yourself with something greater is the desire for power. You may, in thinking out certain facets of the problem, see more clearly another person’s point of view, but thought cannot see the completeness and fullness of the problem—it can only see partially and a partial answer is not a complete answer, therefore it is not a solution. We must look at a problem as a whole—not in compartments, not divided. It is only possible when the process of thinking—which has its source in the ‘me’, the self, in the background of tradition, of conditioning, of prejudice, of hope, of despair—has come to an end. If, in each one of us, the centre of the ‘me’ is non-existent, with its desire for power, position, authority, continuance, self-preservation, surely our problems will come to an end. The self is a problem that thought cannot resolve. There must be an awareness which is not of thought. To be aware, without condemnation or justification, of the activities of the self—just to be aware—is sufficient. As long as the activity of the mind exists, surely there can be no love. When there is love, we shall have no social problems. So long as the mind is seeking to be in a state of non-greed, surely it is still greedy, is it not?. To understand any of these problems, we have to have a very quiet mind, a very still mind, so that the mind can look at the problem without interposing ideas or theories, without any distraction. When I want to understand, look at something, I don’t have to think about it—I look at it. The moment I begin to think, to have ideas, opinions about it, I am already in a state of distraction, looking away from the thing which I must understand. It is the capacity to look without any distraction at our problems that is the only solution. For that there must be a quiet, tranquil mind. In that state of tranquility of a mind that is really still there is love. And it is love alone that can solve all our human problems. We must look at the mind as it is, not as it should be. Your reaction is depends on your knowledge, on your belief, on your experience. The way to love is not to be found through intellect. The intellect, with all its ramifications, with all its desires, ambitions, pursuits, must come to an end for live to come into existence. When you love, you co-operate, you are not thinking of yourself. Only when you discard completely, through understanding, the whole structure of the self, can that which is eternal, timeless, immeasurable, come into being. Cooperation is only possible when you and I do not desire to be anything. If you and I are anonymously creating, without any self-deception, without any barriers of belief and knowledge, without a desire to be secure, then there is true cooperation. When the activity from the centre ceases, only then can there be happiness. We have to be aware of what we are doing, of all the activity which springs from that self-centered state; we must be conscious of it. One of the primary difficulties is that the moment we are conscious of that activity, we want to shape it, we want to control it, we want to condemn it or we want to modify it, so we are seldom able to look at it directly. Self-centered activities are detrimental, are destructive, and every form of identification is essentially activity of a self-centered person. All our relationships, with nature, with people, with ideas, are the outcome of self-centered activity. Surely a man who pursues virtue consciously is unvirtuous. Humility cannot be pursued, and that is the beauty of humility. If you watch yourself and are aware of this centre of activity, you will see that it is only the process of time, of memory, if experiencing and translating every experience according to a memory; you will also see that self-activity is recognition, which is also the process of the mind. In the state of creation, of creativity of the new, which is timeless, there is no action of the ‘me’ at all. You cannot practice love. If you do, then it is a self-conscious activity of the ‘me’ which hopes through living to gain a result. If we are aware of this moment-to-moment truth, of this whole process of time, that awareness releases consciousness or the energy which is intelligence, love. So long as the mind uses consciousness as self-activity, time comes into being with all its miseries with all its conflicts? With all its mischief, its purposive deceptions; and it is only when the mind, understanding this total process, ceases, that love can be. We are seeking, each in his own way, a sense of happiness, of enrichment. Our lives are mostly spent in time—time, not in the sense of chronological sequence, of minutes, hours, days and years, but in the sense of psychological memory. We live by time, we are the result of time. Our minds, our activities, our being, are founded on time; without time we cannot think, because thought is the result of time, thought is the product of many yesterdays and there is no thought without memory. Happiness is not of yesterday, happiness is not the product of time, happiness is always in the present, a timeless state. When you have ecstasy, a creative joy, a moment there is no time: there is only the immediate present. When we use time as a means of acquiring a quality, a virtue or a state of being, we are merely postponing or avoiding what is; and ai think it is important to understand this point. The very resistance to conflict is itself a form of conflict. You are spending your energy in resisting conflict in the form of what you call greed, envy or violence but your mind is still in conflict, so it is important to see the falseness of the process of depending on time as a means of overcoming violence and thereby be free of that process. To understand anything, any human or scientific problem, what is important, what is essential? A quiet mind, is it not? A mind that is intent on understanding. In the alert yet passive state of mind there is understanding. So long as the mind is in conflict, blaming, resisting, condemning, there can be no understanding. It is that quiet mind, that still mind, which brings about transformation. When the mind is no longer resisting, no longer avoiding, no longer discarding or blaming what is but is simply passively aware, then in that passivity of the mind you will find, if you really go into the problem, that there comes transformation. The mind is always still when it is interested, when it desires or has the intention to understandably. When the mind is still, tranquil, not seeking any answer or any solution, neither resisting nor avoiding—it is only then that there can be a regeneration, because then the mind is capable of perceiving what is true; and it is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free. Anything that springs from thought is conditioned, is of time, of memory; therefore it is not real. If one actually realizes that—not speculatively, not imaginatively or foolishly, but actually sees the truth that any activity of the mind in its speculative search, in its philosophical groping, any assumption, any imagination or hope is only self-deception—then what is the power, the creative energy that brings about this fundamental transformation?. To go further and experience more deeply requires a mind that is quiet and alert to find out, does it not? It is no longer pursuing ideas because, if you pursue an idea, there is the thinker following what is being said and so you immediately create duality. Revolution, this psychological, creative revolution in which the ‘me’ is not, comes only when the thinker snd the thought are one, when there is no duality such as the thinker controlling thought; and I suggest it is this experience alone that releases the creative energy which in turn brings about a fundamental revolution, the breaking up of the psychological ‘me’. Love is not possible so long as there is the thinker, the centre of the ‘me’. The only thing which can bring about a fundamental change, a creative, psychological release, is everyday watchfulness, being aware from moment to moment of our motives, the conscious as well as the unconscious. When we realize that disciplines, beliefs, ideals only strengthen the ‘me’ and are therefore utterly futile—when we are aware of that from day to day, see the truth of it, do we not come to the central point when the thinker is constantly separating himself from his thought, from his observations, from his experiences?. So long as the thinker exists apart from his thought, which he is trying to dominate, there can be no fundamental transformation. When the mind realizes that any speculation, any verbalization, any form of thought only gives strength to the ‘me’, when it sees that as long as the thinker exists apart from thought there must be limitation, the conflict of duality—when the mind realizes that, then it is watchful, everlastingly aware of how it is separating itself from experience, asserting itself, seeking power. In that awareness, if the mind pursues it ever more deeply and extensively without seeking an end, a goal, there comes a state in which the thinker and the thought are one. In that state there is no effort, there is no becoming, there is no desire to change; in that state the ‘me’ is not, for there is a transformation which is not of the mind. It is only when the mind is empty that there is a possibility of creation. I am not talking of the emptiness which shows itself through the desire for distraction, which is thoughtlessness. I am talking of the emptiness which comes through extraordinary thoughtfulness, when the mind sees its own power of creating illusion and goes beyond. Creative emptiness is not possible so long as there is the thinker who is waiting, watching, observing in order to gather experience, in order to strengthen himself. Can the mind ever be empty of all symbols, of all words with their sensations, so that there is no experiencer who is accumulating? Is it possible for the mind to put aside completely all the reasonings, the experience, the impositions, authorities, so that it is in a state of emptiness?. Transformation comes into being only when you as an individual begin to be aware of yourself in every thought, action and feeling. Intelligence comes into being when we understand problems as they arise. No guru, no book or scripture, can give you self-knowledge: it comes when you are aware of yourself in relationship. Knowledge and learning are an impediment to the understanding of the new, the timeless, the eternal. Developing a perfect technique does not make you creative. With most of us knowledge or learning had become an addiction and we think that through learning knowing we shall be creative. Why is it that the mind clings always to the known? I’d it not because the mind is constantly seeking certainty, security?. When we say that learning or knowledge is an impediment, a hindrance, we are not including technical knowledge or the efficiency which such knowledge brings. We have in mind quite a different thing: that sense of creative happiness which no amount of knowledge or learning will bring. To be creative in the truest sense of that word is to be free of the past from moment to moment, because it is the past that is continually shadowing the present. To discover anything new you must start on your own; you must start in a journey completely denuded, especially if knowledge, because it is very easy, through knowledge and belief, to have experiences; but those experiences are merely the products of self-projection and therefore utterly unreal, false. A man who is protecting himself constantly through knowledge is obviously not a truth seeker. We want the same happiness, that same inward quietness, joy; and in this mad world of confusion we want someone to tell us what to do. Any act on the part of ‘me’ who wants to be free from greed is still greed. Therefore any action, any response on my part with regard to greed, is obviously not the solution. There must be a quiet mind, an undisturbed mind, to understand anything, especially something which I do not know, something which my mind cannot fathom. To see that discipline is merely conformity to a pattern of action through fear is the beginning of intelligence. We discipline ourselves because we are afraid of not getting what we want. We imitate in order to receive what another has; we copy in order to be happy, which you think he is. There must be freedom for discovery. The first requirement, not as a discipline, is obviously freedom; only virtue gives that freedom. Greed is confusion; anger is confusion; bitterness is confusion. When you see that, obviously you are free of them; you do not resist them but you see that only in freedom can you discover and that any form of compulsion is not freedom, and therefore there is no discovery. The unvirtuous person is a confused person; in confusion, how can you discover anything?. Virtue is not the end-product of a discipline, but virtue is freedom and freedom cannot come through any action which is not virtuous, which is not true in itself. First we must see very clearly the implications of discipline, how it narrows down the mind, limits the mind, compels the mind to a particular action, through our desire, through influence and all the rest of it; a conditioned mind, however ‘virtuous’ that conditioning, cannot possibly be free and therefor cannot understand reality. There is no freedom if you are seeking an end, for you are tied to that end. You may be free from the past but the future holds you, and that is not freedom. It is only in freedom that one can discover anything: a new idea, a new feeling, a new perception. The mind practices non-greed and therefore it is not free from its own consciousness as being non-greedy; therefore, it is not really non-greedy. It has merely taken on a new cloak which it calls non-greed. We can see the total process of all this: the motivation, the desire for an end, the conformity to a pattern, the desire to be secure in pursuing a pattern—all this is merely the moving from the known to the known, always within the limits of the mind's own self-enclosing process. To see all this, to be aware of it, is the beginning of intelligence, and intelligence is neither virtuous nor non-virtuous, it cannot be fitted into a pattern as virtue or non-virtue. It is because we are in conflict and because we want to escape from that conflict that we resort to various forms of disciplines, denials and adjustments. When the mind is conscious that it is tranquil, it is no longer tranquil; when the mind is conscious that it is non-greedy, free from greed, it recognizes itself in the new robe of non-greed but that is not tranquility. The controller and the controlled are one. Because the mind is continuously avoiding, escaping, refusing to see what is, it creates its own hindrances. Because we have so many hindrances that are preventing us from seeing, we do not understand what is and therefore we are getting away from reality; all these hindrances have been created by the mind in order not to see what is. To see what is not only requires a great deal of capacity and awareness of action but it also means turning your back on everything that you have built up. Awareness is observation without condemnation. If I want to understand something, I must observe, I must not criticize, I must not condemn, I must not pursue it as pleasure or avoid it as non-pleasure. A mind that is habitual is insensitive, a mind that is functioning within the groove of a particular action is dull, up liable, whereas awareness demands constant pliability, alertness. Awareness is freedom, it brings freedom, it yields freedom, whereas introspection cultivated conflict, the process of self-enclosure; therefore there is always frustration and fear in it. A man who does not demand anything, who is not seeking an end, who is not searching out a result with all its implications, such a man is in a state of constant experiencing. Everything then has a movement, a meaning; nothing is old, nothing is charred, nothing is repetitive, because what is is never old. Introspection leads to frustration, to further conflict, for in it is implied the desire for change and change is merely a modified continuity. Awareness is a state in which there is no condemnation, no justification or identification, and therefore there is understanding; in that state of passive, alert awareness there is neither the experiencer nor the experienced. It is only when we understand the truth of daily existence that we can go far. You must begin near to go far but most of us want to jump, to begin far without understanding what is close. As we understand the near, we shall find the distance between the near and the far is not. There is no distance—the beginning and the end are one. Relationship is an interconnected challenge and response between two people, between you and me, the challenge which you throw out snd which I accept or to which I respond; also the challenge I throw out to you. The relationship of two people creates society; society is not independent of you and me; the mass is not by itself a separate entity but you and I in our relationship to each other create the mass, the group, the society. Relationship means communion without fear, freedom to understand each other, to communicate directly. It is the people who are isolated behind their walls who talk about duty and responsibility. A man who loves does not talk about responsibility—he loves. Therefore he shared with another his joy, his sorrow, his money. Relationship invariably results in possession, in condemnation, in self-assertive demands for security, for comfort and for gratification, and in that there is naturally no love. The way we treat our wives, children, neighbors, friends is an indication that in our relationship there is really no love at all. It is merely a mutual search for gratification. Relationship is really a process of self-revelation, which is a process of self-knowledge; in that revelation there are many unpleasant things, disquieting, uncomfortable thoughts, activities. Since I do not like what I discover, I run away from a relationship which is not pleasant to a relationship which is pleasant. It is only when you love something and expect a return of your love that there is relationship. When you love, that is when you give yourself over to something entirely, wholly, then there is no relationship. If you do live, if there is such a love, then it is a marvelous thing. In such love there is no friction, there is not the one and the other, there is no friction, there is not the one and the other, there is complete unity. We have moments when we do love, when there is no thought, no motive, but those moments are very rare. There can be true relationship only when there is love but love is not the search for gratification. Love exists only when there is self-forgetfulness, when there is complete communion, not between one or two, but communion with the highest; and that can only take place when the self is forgotten. If we change in our relationship, society changes; merely to rely on legislation, in compulsion, for the transformation of outward society while remaining inwardly corrupt, while continuing inwardly to seek power, position, domination, is to destroy the outward, however carefully and scientifically built. That which is inward is always overcoming the outward. If we had no belief but goodwill, love, and consideration between us, then there would be no wars. What causes war is the desire for power, position, prestige, money; also the disease called nationalism, the worship of a flag; and the disease of organized religion, the worship of a dogma. An ideal is merely an escape, an avoidance of what is, a contradiction of what is. An ideal prevents direct action upon what is. To have peace, we will have to live, we will have to begin not to live an ideal life but to see things as they are and act upon them, transform them. As long as each one of us is seeking psychological security, the psychological security we need—food, clothing, and shelter—is destroyed. To bring about peace in the world, to stop all wars, there must be a revolution in the individual, in you and me. Economic revolution without this inward revolution is meaningless, for hunger is the result of the maladjustment of economic conditions produced by our psychological states—greed, envy, ill-will and possessiveness. To rely on others is utterly futile; others cannot bring us peace. No leader is going to give us peace, no government, no army, no country. What will bring peace is inward transformation which will lead to outward action. There can be right action only when there is right thinking and there is no right thinking when there is no self-knowledge. Without knowing yourself, there is no peace. Peace will come only when you yourself are peaceful, when you yourself are at peace with your neighbor. Relationship is not only between people but between ourselves and nature, between ourselves and property, between ourselves and ideas; as long as that relationship is not fully understood, there must be fear. Life is relationship. To be is to be related and without relationship there is no life. Nothing can exist in isolation; so long as the mind is seeking isolation, there must be fear. Anything that is overcome has to be conquered again and again. No problem can be finally overcome, conquered; it can be understood but not conquered. To resist, to dominate, to do battle with a problem or to build a defense against it is only to create further conflict, whereas if we can understand fear, go into it fully step by step, explore the whole content of it, then fear will never return in any form. Mere suppression, sublimation, or substitution, creates further resistance. When I am face to face with a fact, in direct communion with it, I can look at it, observe it; therefore there is no fear of the fact. What causes fear is my apprehension about the fact, what the fact might be or do. It is my opinion, my idea, my experience, my knowledge about the fact, that creates fear. So long as there is verbalization of the fact, giving the fact a name and therefore identifying or condemning it, so long as thought is judging the fact as an observer, there must be fear.. It is the mind that creates fear, the mind being the process of thinking. Thinking is verbalization. You cannot think without words, without symbols, images; these images, which are the prejudices, the previous knowledge, the apprehensions of the mind, are projected upon the fact, and out of that there arises fear. There is freedom from fear only when the mind is capable of looking at the fact without translating it, without giving it a name, a label. The moment you give a name to that which you call fear, you strengthen it; but if you can look at that feeling without terming it, you will see that it withers away. There can be freedom from fear only when there is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, which is the ending of fear. Most of our activities are escapes. The mischief is much greater when you escape than when you are what you are and remain with it. There is only a problem when we do not accept a thing as it is and wish to transform it. Self-knowledge cannot be gathered through anybody, through any book, through any confession, psychology, or psycho-analyst. It has to be found by yourself, because it is your life. Disturbance is essential for understanding and any attempt to find security is a hinderance to understanding. Gossip, like worry, is an indication of a restless mind. Do we know others if we don’t know ourselves?. Can we judge others, if we do not know the way of our own thinking, the way we act, the way we behave?. It is an extraordinarily dull mind that wants excitement, and goes outside of itself to get it. What brings about the unfold meant of the self so that you begin to understand it is the constant awareness of it without any condemnation, without any identification. There can be understanding only when the mind is silently aware, observing—which is arduous, because we take delight in being active, in being restless, critical, in condemning, justifying. If you are all the time criticizing, throwing up your opinions, what you have learned from books, what someone else has told you and so on and so on, then you and I are not related, because this screen is between us. Your mind must be extraordinarily swift, not anchored to any idea or ideal, to any judgement, to any opinion that you have consolidated through your particular experiences. Understanding comes when there is the swift pliability of a mind which is passively aware. Then it is capable of reception, then it is sensitive. The man who says he knows, does not know. Belief is a denial of truth, belief hinders truth. If you look to an incentive, you are not interested in making life possible for all, you are merely interested in your incentive, which is different from mine—and we will quarrel over the incentive. If we live happily together not because we believe in God but because we are human beings, then we will share the entire means of production in order to produce things for all. What leads to a better life is intelligence; and there cannot be intelligence if there is belief, if there are class divisions, if the means of production are in the hands of a few, if there are isolated nationalities and sovereign governments. Reality is what you are, what you do, what you think, and your belief in God is merely an escape from you monotonous, stupid, and cruel life. Stillness comes only when you understand the whole process of thought, because to understand the process is to end it and the ending of the process of thought is the beginning of silence. When the mind is completely silent, not in use, when there is the silence, which is not a product of effort, then only does the timeless, the eternal come into being. Because I am going to become something, there is never a complete understanding of myself, and to understand myself, what I am exactly now, does not require the cultivation of memory. On the contrary, memory is a hinderance to the understanding of what is. Memory of facts, of technical things, is an obvious necessity, but memory as psychological retention is detrimental to the understanding of life, the communion with each other. It is extraordinarily difficult and arduous to be aware of what is, because our very thinking has become a distraction. The mind can receive reality only when it is absolutely still, not demanding, not craving, not longing, not asking, whether for yourself, for the nation or for another. If I don’t know myself, then my action, my thought, has no foundation whatsoever. A person who is demanding, petitioning, supplications, longing for direction will find what he seeks but it will not be the truth. What he receives will be the response of the unconscious layers of his own mind which project themselves into the conscious; that still, small voice which directs him is not the real but only the response of the unconscious. What is is a fact, is the truth, and all else is an escape, it is not the truth. To understand what is, the conflict of duality must cease, because the negative response of becoming something other than what is is the denial of the understanding of what is. The understanding of what is, being aware of what is, reveals extraordinary depths, in which is reality, happiness and joy. Self-knowledge is the beginning of meditation—not the knowledge that you pick up from my books, from authorities, from gurus, but the knowledge that comes into being through self-inquiry, which is self-awareness. To be ignorant is to give wrong values; the very nature of stupidity is the lack of comprehension of right values. Meditation is understanding. Understanding means giving right significance, right valuation, to all things. Love is not of the mind nor a thing of the mind. When there is self-knowledge there is right thinking snd hence right action. When there is right action, there is no confusion and therefore there is no supplication to someone else to lead you out of it. The sexual act is no problem to you, any more than eating is a problem to you, but if you think about eating or anything else all day long because you have nothing else to think about, it becomes a problem to you. If you watch very carefully, you will see that though the response, the movement of thought, seems so swift, there are gaps, there are intervals between thoughts. Between two thoughts there is a period of silence which is not related to the thoughts process if you observe you will see that that period of silence, that interval, is not of time and the discovery of that interval, the full experiencing of that interval, liberates you from conditioning—or rather it does not liberate ‘you’ but there is liberation from conditioning. So the understanding of the process of thinking is meditation. You really only love when you do not possess, when you are not envious, not greedy, when you are respectful, when you have mercy and compassion, when you have consideration for your wife, your children, your neighbor, your unfortunate servant. Only in ending can there be renewal, the creative, the unknown—not it carrying over from day to day our experiences, our memories and misfortunes. It is only when we die each day to all that is old that there can be the new. A man who is fully aware is meditating; he does not pray, because he does not want anything. To be new is creative and to be creative is to be happy; a happy man is not concerned whether he is rich or poor, he does not care to what level of society he belongs, to what caste or to what country. He has no leaders, no gods, no temples, no churches and therefore no quarrels, no enmity. The challenge is always new and the response is always old. It is only when the mind is not giving continuity to thought, when it is still with a stillness that is not induced, that is without any causation—it is only then that there can be freedom from the background. Everything you do in life gives emphasis to the ‘me’, to the self. Love cannot be thought about, love cannot be cultivated, love cannot be practiced. Fear comes into being when there is division between the thinker and his thought; when there is no thinker, then only is there no conflict in thought. When the mind is agitated, questioning, worrying, dissecting, analyzing, there is no understanding. When there is intensity to understand, the mind is obviously tranquil. The more and more you analyze, the less and less you understand. You are different, you are modified, you have changed, you are new; but I have the picture of you as you were yesterday. Therefore I absorb the new into the old. I do not meet you anew but I have yesterday’s picture of you, so my response to the challenges is always conditioned. If you are not fully conscious, fully cognizant of your daily activities, merely to lock yourself in a room and sit down in front of a picture of your guru, of your master, to meditate, is an escape, because without self-knowledge there is no right thinking and, without right thinking, what you do has no meaning, however noble your intentions are. When you do not name a group of people, you are compelled to look at each individual face and not treat them all as the mass. Therefore you are much more alert, much more observing, more understanding; you have a deeper sense of pity, love; but if you treat them all as the mass, it is over. To find out if it is possible for the mind to be completely free from all cindituining, you just be free to inquire and to discover. The man who is cultivating humility is surely not a humble man; he may fall his pride humility, but he is a proud man, and that is why he seeks to become humble. You can know love only when all these things have stopped, come to an end, only when you don’t possess, when you are not merely emotional with decoration to an object. Life is not superficial; it demands living completely and because we are living only superficially we know only superficial reaction. The problem, if you love it, is as beautiful as the sunset. If you are antagonistic to the problem, you will never understand. Most of us are antagonistic because we are frightened of the result, of what may happen if we proceed, so we lose the significance and the purview of the problem. Why is it that whatever we touch we turn into a problem?. The superficial, conscious mind is occupied with its daily activities, with earning a livelihood, deceiving others, exploiting others, running away from problems—all the daily activities of our existence. If you really want to know yourself, you will search out your heart and your mind to know their full content and when there is the intention to know, you will know. Then you can follow, without condemnation or justification, every moment of thought and feeling; by following every thought and every feeling as it arises you bring about tranquility which is not compelled, not regimented, but which is the outcome of having no problem, no contradiction. It is like the pool that becomes peaceful, quiet, any evening when there is no wind; when the mind is still, then that which is immeasurable comes into being. Only when there is no residue of memory can there be newness and there is residue when experience is not finished, concluded, ended; that is when the understanding of experience is incomplete. When experience is complete, there is no residue—that is the beauty of life. When there is only one thing in your life which is an Avenue to ultimate escape, to complete forgetfulness of yourself if only for a few seconds, you cling to it because that is the only moment in which you are happy. The new is always being absorbed by the old, into the old habits, customs, ideas, traditions, memories. When you love, there is neither one nor many: there is only love. It is only when there is love that all our problems can be solved and then we shall know it’s bliss and it’s happiness. As love is the unknown, we must come to it by discarding the known. Action based on idea is very superficial, is not true action at all, is only ideation, which is merely the thought-process going on. If you do not label, you have to regard every feeling as it arises. Our problem is how to be free from all conditioning. The man who is ambitious, spiritually or otherwise, can never be without a problem, because problems cease only when the self is forgotten, when the ‘me’ is non-existent, and that state of non-existence of the self is not an act of will, it is not a mere reaction. We always think from a particular point of view, from a fixed point of view. When the superficial, conscious mind is fully aware of all its activities, through that understanding it becomes spontaneously quiet, not drugged by compulsion or regimented by desire; then it is in a position to receive the intimation, the hints of the unconscious, of the many, many hidden layers of the mind—the racial instincts, the buried memories, the concealed pursuits, the deep wounds that are still unhealed. It is only when all these have been projected themselves and are understood, when the whole consciousness is unburdened, unfettered by any sound, by any memory whatsoever, that it is in a position to receive the eternal. The mind can only corrupt live, it cannot give birth to live, it cannot give beauty. Action which transforms us as human beings, which brings regeneration, redemption, transformation—call it what you will—such action is not based on idea. It is action irrespective of the sequence of reward or punishment. Such action is timeless, because mind, which is the time process, does not enter into it. The old response arises from the thinker. Is not the thinker always the old? Because your thought is founded on the past, when you meet the new it is the thinker who is meeting it; the experience of yesterday is meeting it. The thinker is always old. If there is no becoming, no attempting to be something, then there is no sense of fear; there is no contradiction; there is no lie in us at any level, consciously or unconsciously—something to be suppressed, something to be shown up. It requires a great deal of understanding of the implications of sensation, which are desires. We want so many things, all in contradiction with one another. We are so many conflicting masks; we take on a mask when it suits us and deny it when something else is more profitable, more pleasurable. When one is aware of the full significance of contradiction in oneself, it brings an extraordinary change: you are yourself, then, not something you are trying to be. You are no longer following an ideal, seeking happiness. You are what you are and from there you can proceed. Then there is no possibility of contradiction. There are very few good people—people who are not seeking something, who are not after something. Those who are seeking something or are after something are exploiters and therefore it is very difficult for anyone to find a companion to love. To know something you must be of it. You must yourself have had the experience to also and therefore your saying that I have realized has apparently no meaning. You cannot be a musician by merely knowing how to sing. You may know all the steps of a dance but if you have not creation in your heart, you are only functioning as a machine. You cannot love of your object is merely to achieve a result. Beauty is not an achievement, it is reality, now, not tomorrow. We should not invest our happiness in things, in family, in ideals. We should be happy and therefore things, people and ideals would not dominate our lives. Because we do not love and because we are not happy we invest in things, thinking they will give us happiness, and one of the things in which we invest is God. The moment you describe something which is indescribable, it ceases to be the real. All the time we want to know, because then we shall be able to continue, then we shall be able, we think, to capture ultimate happiness, permanency. We want to know because we are not happy, because we are striving miserably, because we are worn out, degraded. Yet instead of realizing the simple fact—that we are degraded, that we are dull, weary, in turmoil—we want to move away from what is the known into the unknown, which again becomes the known and therefore we can never find the real. If you understand what is the known, you will experience that extraordinary silence which is not induced, not enforced, that creative emptiness in which alone reality can enter. It cannot come to that which is becoming, which is striving; it can only come to that which is being; which understands what is. I met you yesterday. In the meantime you have changed. You have undergone a modification but I still have yesterday’s picture of you. I meet you today with my picture of you and therefore I do not understand you—I understand only the picture of you which I acquired yesterday. If I want to understand you, who are modified, changed, I must remove, I must be free of the picture of yesterday. In other words to understand a challenge, which is always new, I must also meet it anew, there must be no residue of yesterday; so I must say adieu to yesterday. What will make me open to you is my intention to understand. I want to be open because I have nothing to hide, I am not afraid; therefore I am open and there is immediate communion, there is truth. To receive truth, to know its beauty, to know its joy, there must be instant receptivity, unclouded by theories, fears and answers. Simplicity is action, without idea. So long as there is not creation, we are centers of mischief, misery, and destruction. Simplicity is not to be found; it does not lie as a choice between the essential and the non-essential. It comes into being only when the self is not; when the mind is not caught in speculations, conclusions, beliefs, ideations. Such a free mind only can find truth. Such a mind alone can receive that which is immeasurable, which is unnameable; and that is simplicity. So long as you are inquiring with what the mind should be occupied, it will be occupied with trivialities. The mind is quiet when it sees the truth that understanding comes only when it is quiet; that if I would understand you, I must be quiet, I cannot have reactions against you, I must not be prejudiced, I must put away all my conclusions, my experiences and meet you face to face. Only then, when the mind is free from my conditioning, do I understand. Quietness of mind, tranquility of mind, is not a thing to be produced by will-power, by any action of desire; if it is, then such a mind is enclosed, isolated, it is a dead mind and therefore incapable of adaptability, of pliability, of swiftness. Seeing the false as false and the true as the true is transformation, because when you see something very clearly as the truth, that truth liberates. That which ensures is not eternal; eternity is in the moment. Eternity is in the now. The perception of truth is from moment to moment; and that perception is delayed through verbalization of the moment. Love is not different from truth. Love is that state in which the thought process, as time, has completely ceased. Where there is love, there is revolution, because love is transformation from moment to moment