01/01 Have you ever sat very silently, not with your attention fixed on anything, not making an effort to concentrate, but with the mind very quiet, really still? Then you hear everything, don't you? You hear the far off noises as well as those that are nearer and those that are very close by, the immediate sounds-which means really that you are listening to everything. Your mind is not confined to one narrow little channel. If you can listen in this way, listen with ease, without strain, you will find an extraordinary change taking place within you, a change which comes without your volition, without your asking; and in that change there is great beauty and depth of insight. 01/02 How do youlisten? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through your ambitions, desires, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice; you are listening to your own desires. And is there any other form of listening? Is it not important to find out how to listen not only to what is being said but to everything- to the noise in the streets, to the chatter of birds, to the noise of the tramcar, to the restless sea, to the voice of your husband, to your wife, to your friends, to the cry of a baby? Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one's own desires through which one listens. Can one put aside all these screens through which we listen, and really listen? 01/03 Listening is an art not easily come by, but in it there is beauty and great understanding. We listen with the various depths of our being, but our listening is always with a preconception or from a particular point of view. We do not listen simply; there is always the intervening screen of our own thoughts, conclusions, and prejudices....To listen there must be an inward quietness, a freedom from the strain of acquiring, a relaxed attention. This alert yet passive state is able to hear what is beyond the verbal conclusion. Words confuse; they are only the outward means of communication; but to commune beyond the noise of words, there must be in listening an alert passivity. Those who love may listen; but it is extremely rare to find a listener. Most of us are after results, achieving goals; we are forever overcoming and conquering, and so there is no listening. It is only in listening that one hears the song of the words. 01/04 I do not know whether you have listened to a bird. To listen to something demands that your mind be quiet- not a mystical quietness, but just quietness. I am telling you something, and to listen to me you have to be quiet, not have all kinds of ideas buzzing in your mind. When you look at a flower, you look at it, not naming it, not classifying it, not saying that it belongs to a certain species- when you do these, you cease to look at it. Therefore I am saying that it is one of the most difficult things to listen- to listen to the communist, to the socialist, to the congressman, to the capitalist, to anybody, to your wife, to your children, to your neighbor, to the bus conductor, to the bird- just to listen. It is only when you listen without the idea, without thought, that you are directly in contact; and being in contact, you will understand whether what he is saying is true or false; you do not have to discuss. 01/05 When you make an effort to listen, are you listening? Is not that very effort a distraction that prevents listening? Do you make an effort when you listen to something that gives you delight? ...You are not aware of the truth, nor do you see the false as the false, as long as your mind is occupied in any way with effort, with comparison, with justification or condemnation....Listeningitself is a complete act; the very act of listening brings its own freedom. But are you really concerned with listening, or with altering the turmoil within? If you would listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease. You see, we are constantly trying to be this or that, to achieve a particular state, to capture one kind of experience and avoid another, so the mind is everlastingly occupied with something; it is never still to listen to the noise of its own struggles and pains. Be simple...and don't try to become something or to capture some experience. 01/06 You are now listening to me; you are not making an effort to pay attention, you are just listening; and if there is truth in what you hear, you will find a remarkable change taking place in you- a change that is not premeditated or wished for, a transformation, a complete revolution in which the truth alone is master and not the creations of your mind. And if I may suggest it, you should listen in that way to everything- not only to what I am saying, but also to what other people are saying, to the birds, to the whistle of a locomotive, to the noise of the bus going by. You will find that the more you listen to everything, the greater is the silence, and that silence is then not broken by noise. It is only when you are resisting something, when you are putting up a barrier between yourself and that to which you do not want to listen- it is only then that there is a struggle. 01/07 Questioner: While I am here listening to you, I seem to understand, but when I am away from here, I don't understand, even though I try to apply what you have been saying.Krishnamurti: ...You are listening to yourself, and not to the speaker. If you are listening to the speaker, he becomes your leader, your way to understanding which is a horror, an abomination, because you have then established the hierarchy of authority. So what you are doing here is listening to yourself. You are looking at the picture the speaker is painting, which is your own picture, not the speaker's. If that much is clear, that you are looking at yourself, then you can say, "Well, I see myself as I am, and I don't want to do anything about it"- and that is the end of it. But if you say, "I see myself as I am, and there must be a change," then you begin to work out of your own understanding- which is entirely different from applying what the speaker is saying....But if, as the speaker is speaking, you are listening to yourself, then out of that listening there is clarity, there is sensitivity; out of that listening the mind becomes healthy, strong. Neither obeying nor resisting, it becomes alive, intense and it is only such a human being who can create a new generation, a new world. 01/08 ... It seems to me that learning is astonishingly difficult, as is listening also. We never actually listen to anything because our mind is not free; our ears are stuffed up with those things that we already know, so listening becomes extraordinarily difficult. I think-or rather, it is a fact-that if one can listen to something with all of one's being, with vigor, with vitality, then the very act of listening is a liberative factor, but unfortunately you never do listen, as you have never learned about it. After all, you only learn when you give your whole being to something. When you give your whole being to mathematics, you learn; but when you are in a state of contradiction, when you do not want to learn but are forced to learn, then it becomes merely a process of accumulation. To learn is like reading a novel with innumerable characters; it requires your full attention, not contradictory attention. If you want to learn about a leaf-a leaf of the spring or a leaf of the summer-you must really look at it, see the symmetry of it, the texture of it, the quality of the living leaf. There is beauty, there is vigor, there is vitality in a single leaf. So to learn about the leaf, the flower, the cloud, the sunset, or a human being, you must look with all intensity. 01/09 To discover anything new you must start on your own; you must start on a journey completely denuded, especially of 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. If you are to discover for yourself what is the new, it is no good carrying the burden of the old, especially knowledge- the knowledge of another, however great. You use knowledge as a means of self-projection, security, and you want to be quite sure that you have the same experiences as the Buddha or the Christ or X. But a man who is protecting himself constantly through knowledge is obviously not a truth-seeker....For the discovery of truth there is no path.... When you want to find something new, when you are experimenting with anything, your mind has to be very quiet, has it not? If your mind is crowded, filled with facts, knowledge, they act as an impediment to the new; the difficulty for most of us is that the mind has become so important, so predominantly significant, that it interferes constantly with anything that may be new, with anything that may exist simultaneously with the known. Thus knowledge and learning are impediments for those who would seek, for those who would try to understand that which is timeless. 01/10 The word learning has great significance. There are two kinds of learning. For most of us learning means the accumulation of knowledge, of experience, of technology, of a skill, of a language. There is also psychological learning, learning through experience, either the immediate experiences of life, which leave a certain residue, of tradition, of the race, of society. There are these two kinds of learning how to meet life: psychological and physiological; outward skill and inward skill. There is really no line of demarcation between the two; they overlap. We are not considering for the moment the skill that we learn through practice, the technological knowledge that we acquire through study. What we are concerned about is the psychological learning that we have acquired through the centuries or inherited as tradition, as knowledge, as experience. This we call learning, but I question whether it is learning at all. I am not talking about learning a skill, a language, a technique, but I am asking whether the mind ever learns psychologically. It has learned, and with what it has learned it meets the challenge of life. It is always translating life or the new challenge according to what it has learned. That is what we are doing. Is that learning? Doesn't learning imply something new, something that I don't know and am learning? If I am merely adding to what I already know, it is no longer learning. 01/11 To inquire and to learn is the function of the mind. By learning I do not mean the mere cultivation of memory or the accumulation of knowledge, but the capacity to think clearly and sanely without illusion, to start from facts and not from beliefs and ideals. There is no learning if thought originates from conclusions. Merely to acquire information or knowledge is not to learn. Learning implies the love of understanding and the love of doing a thing for itself. Learning is possible only when there is no coercion of any kind. And coercion takes many forms, does it not? There is coercion through influence, through attachment or threat, through persuasive encouragement, or subtle forms of reward.Most people think that learning is encouraged through comparison, whereas the contrary is the fact. Comparison brings about frustration and merely encourages envy, which is called competition. Like other forms of persuasion, comparison prevents learning and breeds fear. 01/12 Learning is one thing and acquiring knowledge is another. Learning is a continuous process, not a process of addition, not a process which you gather and then from there act. Most of us gather knowledge as memory, as idea, store it up as experience, and from there act. That is, we act from knowledge, technological knowledge, knowledge as experience, knowledge as tradition, knowledge that one has derived through one's particular idiosyncratic tendencies; with that background, with that accumulation as knowledge, as experience, as tradition, we act. In that process there is no learning. Learning is never accumulative; it is a constant movement. I do not know if you have ever gone into this question at all: what is learning and what is the acquisition of knowledge? ...Learning is never accumulative. You cannot store up learning and then from that storehouse act. You learn as you are going along. Therefore, there is never a moment of retrogression or deterioration or decline. 01/13 Wisdom issomething that has to be discovered by each one, and it is not the result of knowledge. Knowledge and wisdom do not go together. Wisdom comes when there is the maturity of self-knowing. Without knowing oneself, order is not possible, and therefore there is no virtue.Now, learning about oneself, and accumulating knowledge about oneself, are two different things.... A mind that is acquiring knowledge is never learning. What it is doing is this: It is gathering to itself information, experience as knowledge, and from the background of what it has gathered, it experiences, it learns; and therefore it is never really learning, but always knowing, acquiring.Learning is always in the active present; it has no past. The moment you say to yourself, 'I have learned,' it has already become knowledge, and from the background of that knowledge you can accumulate, translate, but you cannot further learn. It is only a mind that is not acquiring, but always learning-it is only such a mind that can understand this whole entity that we call the 'me,' the self. I have to know myself, the structure, the nature, the significance of the total entity; but I can't do that burdened with my previous knowledge, with my previous experience, or with a mind that is conditioned, for then I am not learning, I am merely interpreting, translating, looking with an eye that is already clouded by the past. 01/14 We generally learn through study, through books, through experience, or through being instructed. Those are the usual ways of learning. We commit to memory what to do and what not to do, what to think and what not to think, how to feel, how to react. Through experience, through study, through analysis, through probing, through introspective examination, we store up knowledge as memory; and memory then responds to further challenges and demands, from which there is more and more learning....What is learned is committed to memory as knowledge, and that knowledge functions whenever there is a challenge, or whenever we have to do something.Now I think there is a totally different way of learning, and I am going to talk a little bit about it; but to understand it, and to learn in this different way, you must be completely rid of authority; otherwise, you will merely be instructed, and you will repeat what you have heard. That is why it is very important to understand the nature of authority. Authority prevents learning- learning that is not the accumulation of knowledge as memory. Memory always responds in patterns; there is no freedom. A man who is burdened with knowledge, with instructions, who is weighted down by the things he has learned, is never free. He may be most extraordinarily erudite, but his accumulation of knowledge prevents him from being free, and therefore he is incapable of learning. 01/15 To be free, you have to examine authority, the whole skeleton of authority, tearing to pieces the whole dirty thing. And that requires energy, actual physical energy, and also, it demands psychological energy. But the energy is destroyed, is wasted when one is in conflict. ... So when there is the understanding of the whole process of conflict, there is the ending of conflict, there is abundance of energy. Then you can proceed, tearing down the house that you have built throughout the centuries and that has no meaning at all.You know,to destroy is to create. We must destroy, not the buildings, not the social or economic system- this comes about daily- but the psychological, the unconscious and the conscious defenses, securities that one has built up rationally, individually, deeply, and superficially. We must tear through all that to be utterly defenseless, because you must be defenseless to love and have affection. Then you see and understand ambition, authority; and you begin to see when authority is necessary and at what level-the authority of the policeman and no more. Then there is no authority of learning, no authority of knowledge, no authority of capacity, no authority that function assumes and which becomes status. To understand all authority- of the gurus, of the Masters, and others- requires a very sharp mind, a clear brain, not a muddy brain, not a dull brain. 01/16 Can the mind be free from authority, which means free from fear, so that it is no longer capable of following? If so, this puts an end to imitation, which becomes mechanical. After all, virtue, ethics, is not a repetition of what is good. The moment it becomes mechanical, it ceases to be virtue. Virtue is something that must be from moment to moment, like humility. Humility cannot be cultivated, and a mind that has no humility is incapable of learning. So virtue has no authority. The social morality is no morality at all; it's immoral because it admits competition, greed, ambition, and therefore society is encouraging immorality. Virtue is something that transcends morality. Without virtue there is no order, and order is not according to a pattern, according to a formula. A mind that follows a formula through disciplining itself to achieve virtue creates for itself the problems of immorality.An external authority that the mind objectifies, apart from the law, as God, as moral, and so on, becomes destructive when the mind is seeking to understand what real virtue is. We have our own authority as experience, as knowledge, which we are trying to follow. There is this constant repetition, imitation, which we all know. Psychological authority- not the authority of the law, the policeman who keeps order- the psychological authority, which each one has, becomes destructive of virtue because virtue is something that is living, moving. As you cannot possibly cultivate humility, as you cannot possibly cultivate love, so also virtue cannot be cultivated; and there is great beauty in that. Virtue is nonmechanical, and without virtue there is no foundation for clear thinking. 01/17 The problem then is: Is it possible for a mind that has been so conditioned-brought up in innumerable sects, religions, and all the superstitions, fears- to break away from itself and thereby bring about a new mind?....The old mind is essentially the mind that is bound by authority. I am not using the word authority in the legalistic sense; but by that word I mean authority as tradition, authority as knowledge, authority as experience, authority as the means of finding security and remaining in that security, outwardly or inwardly, because, after all, that is what the mind is always seeking-a place where it can be secure, undisturbed. Such authority may be the self-imposed authority of an idea or the so-called religious idea of God, which has no reality to a religious person. An idea is not a fact, it is a fiction. God is a fiction; you may believe in it, but still it is a fiction. But to find God you must completely destroy the fiction, because the old mind is the mind that is frightened, is ambitious, is fearful of death, of living, and of relationship; and it is always, consciously or unconsciously, seeking a permanency, security. 01/18 If we canunderstand the compulsion behind our desire to dominate or to be dominated, then perhaps we can be free from the crippling effects of authority. We crave to be certain, to be right, to be successful, to know; and this desire for certainty, for permanence, builds up within ourselves the authority of personal experience, while outwardly it creates the authority of society, of the family, of religion, and so on. But merely to ignore authority, to shake off its outward symbols, is of very little significance.To break away from one tradition and conform to another, to leave this leader and follow that, is but a superficial gesture. If we are to be aware of the whole process of authority, if we are to see the inwardness of it, if we are to understand and transcend the desire for certainty, then we must have extensive awareness and insight, we must be free, not at the end, but at the beginning. 01/19 We listenwith hope and fear; we seek the light of another but are not alertly passive to be able to understand. If the liberated seems to fulfill our desires we accept him; if not, we continue our search for the one who will; what most of us desire is gratification at different levels. What is important is not how to recognize one who is liberated but how to understand yourself. No authority here or hereafter can give you knowledge of yourself; without self-knowledge there is no liberation from ignorance, from sorrow. 01/20 Why do weaccept, why do we follow? We follow another's authority, another's experience and then doubt it; this search for authority and its sequel, disillusionment, is a painful process for most of us. We blame or criticize the once accepted authority, the leader, the teacher, but we do not examine our own craving for an authority who can direct our conduct. Once we understand this craving we shall comprehend the significance of doubt. 01/21 Self-awareness is arduous, and since most of us prefer an easy, illusory way, we bring into being the authority that gives shape and pattern to our life. This authority may be the collective, the State; or it may be the personal, the Master, the savior, the guru. Authority of any kind is blinding, it breeds thoughtlessness; and as most of us find that to be thoughtful is to have pain, we give ourselves over to authority. Authority engenders power, and power always becomes centralized and therefore utterly corrupting; it corrupts not only the wielder of power, but also him who follows it. The authority of knowledge and experience is perverting, whether it be vested in the Master, his representative or the priest. It is your own life, this seemingly endless conflict, that is significant, and not the pattern or the leader. The authority of the Master and the priest takes you away from the central issue, which is the conflict within yourself. 01/22 Most of usare satisfied with authority because it gives us a continuity, a certainty, a sense of being protected. But a man who would understand the implications of this deep psychological revolution must be free of authority, must he not? He cannot look to any authority, whether of his own creation or imposed upon him by another. And is this possible? Is it possible for me not to rely on the authority of my own experience? Even when I have rejected all the outward expressions of authority-books, teachers, priests, churches, beliefs-I still have the feeling that at least I can rely on my own judgment, on my own experiences, on my own analysis. But can I rely on my experience, on my judgment, on my analysis? My experience is the result of my conditioning, just as yours is the result of your conditioning, is it not? I may have been brought up as a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Hindu, and my experience will depend on my cultural, economic,social, and religious background, just as yours will. And can I rely on that? Can I rely for guidance, for hope, for the vision which will give me faith in my own judgment, which again is the result of accumulated memories, experiences, the conditioning of the past meeting the present?...Now, when I have put all these questions to myself and I am aware of this problem, I see there can only be one state in which reality, newness, can come into being, which brings about a revolution. That state is when the mind is completely empty of the past, when there is no analyzer, no experience, no judgment, no authority of any kind. 01/23 So, to understand the innumerable problems that each one of us has, is it not essential that there be self-knowledge? And that is one of the most difficult things, self-awareness - which does not mean an isolation, a withdrawal. Obviously, to know oneself is essential; but to know oneself does not imply a withdrawal from relationship. And it would be a mistake, surely, to think that one can know oneself significantly, completely, fully, through isolation, through exclusion, or by going to some psychologist, or to some priest; or that one can learn self-knowledge through a book. Self-knowledge is obviously a process, not an end in itself; and to know oneself, one must be aware of oneself in action, which is relationship. You discover yourself, not in isolation, not in withdrawal, but in relationship-in relationship to society, to your wife, your husband, your brother, to man; but to discover how you react, what your responses are, requires an extraordinary alertness of mind, a keenness of perception. 01/24 The transformation of the world is brought about by the transformation of oneself, because the self is the product and a part of the total process of human existence. To transform oneself, self-knowledge is essential; without knowing what you are, there is no basis for right thought, and without knowing yourself there cannot be transformation. One must know oneself as one is, not as one wishes to be, which is merely an ideal and therefore fictitious, unreal; it is only that which is that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be. To know oneself as one is requires 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. If you would follow anything, it is no good being tethered. To know yourself, there must be the awareness, the alertness of mind in which there is freedom from all beliefs, from all idealization, because beliefs and ideals only give you a color, perverting true perception. If you want to know what you are, you cannot imagine or have belief in something which you are not. If I am greedy, envious, violent, merely having an ideal of non-violence, of non-greed, is of little value.... The understanding of what you are, whatever it be- ugly or beautiful, wicked or mischievous- the understanding of what you are, without distortion, is the beginning of virtue. Virtue is essential, for it gives freedom. 01/25 Without self-knowledge, experience breeds illusion; with self-knowledge, experience, which is the response to challenge, does not leave a cumulative residue as memory. Self-knowledge is the discovery from moment to moment of the ways of the self, its intentions and pursuit, its thoughts and appetites. There can never be "your experience" and "my experience"; the very term "my experience" indicates ignorance and the acceptance of illusion. 01/26 ...There is no method for self-knowledge. Seeking a method invariably implies the desire to attain some result and that is what we all want. We follow authority - if not that of a person, then of a system, of an ideology because we want a result that will be satisfactory, which will give us security. We really do not want to understand ourselves, our impulses and reactions, the whole process of our thinking, the conscious as well as the unconscious; we would rather pursue a system which assures us of a result. But the pursuit of a system is invariably the outcome of our desire for security, for certainty, and the result is obviously not the understanding of oneself. When we follow a method, we must have authorities- the teacher, the guru, the savior, the Master - who will guarantee us what we desire; and surely that is not the way to self-knowledge.Authorityprevents the understanding of oneself, does it not? 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. There can be creativeness only through self-knowledge. 01/27 When we are aware of ourselves, is not the whole movement of living a way of uncovering the "me," the ego, the self? The self is a very complex process which can be uncovered only in relationship, in our daily activities, in the way we talk, the way we judge, calculate, the way we condemn others and ourselves. All that reveals the conditioned state of our own thinking, and is it not important to be aware of this whole process? It is only through awareness of what is true from moment to moment that there is discovery of the timeless, the eternal. Without self-knowledge, the eternal cannot be. When we do not know ourselves, the eternal becomes a mere word, a symbol, a speculation, a dogma, a belief, an illusion to which the mind can escape. But if one begins to understand the "me" in all its various activities from day to day, then in that very understanding, without any effort, the nameless, the timeless comes into being. But the timeless is not a reward for self-knowledge. That which is eternal cannot besought after; the mind cannot acquire it. It comes into being when the mind is quiet, and the mind can be quiet only when it is simple, when it is no longer storing up, condemning, judging, weighing. It is only the simple mind that can understand the real, not the mind that is full of words, knowledge, information. The mind that analyzes, calculates, is not a simple mind. 01/28 Without knowing yourself, do what you will, there cannot possibly be the state of meditation. I mean by "self-knowing," knowing every thought, every mood, every word, every feeling; knowing the activity of your mind-not knowing the Supreme Self, the big Self; there is no such thing; the Higher Self, the Atman, is still within the field of thought. Thought is the result of your conditioning, thought is the response of your memory-ancestral or immediate. And merely to try to meditate without first establishing deeply, irrevocably, that virtue which comes about through self-knowing, is utterly deceptive and absolutely useless.Please, itis very important for those who are serious, to understand this. Because if you cannot do that, your meditation and actual living are divorced, are apart-so wide apart that though you may meditate, taking postures indefinitely, for the rest of your life, you will not see beyond your nose; any posture you take, anything that you do, will have no meaning whatsoever.... It isimportant to understand what this self-knowing is, just to be aware, without any choice, of the "me" which has its source in a bundle of memories- just to be conscious of it without interpretation, merely to observe the movement of the mind. But that observation is prevented when you are merely accumulating through observation - what to do, what not to do, what to achieve, what not to achieve; if you do that, you put an end to the living process of the movement of the mind as the self. That is, I have to observe and see the fact, the actual, the what is. If I approach it with an idea, with an opinion - such as "I must not," or "I must," which are the responses of memory- then the movement of what is is hindered, is blocked; and therefore, there is no learning. 01/29 Can you not just listen to this as the soil receives the seed and see if the mind is capable of being free, empty? It can be empty only by understanding all its own projections, its own activities, not off and on, but from day to day, from moment to moment. Then you will find the answer, then you will see that the change comes without your asking, that the state of creative emptiness is not a thing to be cultivated- it is there, it comes darkly, without any invitation, and only in that state is there a possibility of renewal, newness, revolution. 01/30 Right thinking comes with self-knowledge. Without understanding yourself, you have no basis for thought; without self-knowledge what you think is not true.You and the world are not two different entities with separate problems; you and the world are one. Your problem is the world's problem. You may be the result of certain tendencies, of environmental influences, but you are not different fundamentally from another. Inwardly we are very much alike; we are all driven by greed, ill will, fear, ambition, and so on. Our beliefs, hopes, aspirations have a common basis. We are one; we are one humanity, though the artificial frontiers of economics and politics and prejudice divide us. If you kill another, you are destroying yourself. You are the center of the whole, and without understanding yourself you cannot understand reality.We have anintellectual knowledge of this unity but we keep knowledge and feeling in different compartments and hence we never experience the extraordinary unity of man. 01/31 Self-knowledge is not according to any formula. You may go to a psychologist or a psychoanalyst to find out about yourself, but that is not self-knowledge. Self-knowledge, comes into being when we are aware, of ourselves in relationship, which shows what we are from moment to moment. Relationship is a mirror in which to see ourselves as we actually are. But most of us are incapable of looking at ourselves as we are in relationship, because we immediately begin to condemn or justify what we see. We judge, we evaluate, we compare, we deny or accept, but we never observe actually what is, and for most people this seems to be the most difficult thing to do; yet this alone is the beginning of self-knowledge. If one is able to see oneself as one is in this extraordinary mirror of relationship which does not distort, if one can just look into this mirror with full attention and see actually what is, be aware of it without condemnation, without judgment, without evaluation - and one does this when there is earnest interest then one will find that the mind is capable of freeing itself from all conditioning; and it is only then that the mind is free to discover that which lies beyond the field of thought.After all,however learned or however petty the mind may be, it is consciously or unconsciously limited, conditioned, and any extension of this conditioning is still within the field of thought. So freedom is something entirely different. 02/01 Life as weknow it, our daily life, is a process of becoming. I am poor and I act with an end in view, which is to become rich. I am ugly and I want to become beautiful. Therefore my life is a process of becoming something. The will to be is the will to become, at different levels of consciousness, in different states, in which there is challenge, response, naming and recording. Now, this becoming is strife, this becoming is pain, it is not? It is a constant struggle: I am this, and I want to become that. 02/02 The mind has an idea, perhaps pleasurable, and it wants to be like that idea, which is a projection of your desire. You are this, which you do not like, and you want to become that, which you like. The ideal is a self-projection; the opposite is an extension of what is; it is not the opposite at all, but a continuity of what is, perhaps somewhat modified. The projection is self-willed, and conflict is the struggle towards the projection.... You are struggling to become something, and that something is part of yourself. The ideal is your own projection. See how the mind has played a trick upon itself. You are struggling after words, pursuing your own projection, your own shadow. You are violent, and you are struggling to become nonviolent, the ideal; but the ideal is a projection of what is, only under a different name.When you are aware of this trick which you have played upon yourself, then the false as the false is seen. The struggle towards an illusion is the disintegrating factor. All conflict, all becoming is disintegration. When there is an awareness of this trick that the mind has played upon itself, then there is only what is. When the mind is stripped of all becoming, of all ideals, of all comparison and condemnation, when its own structure has collapsed, then the what is has undergone complete transformation. As long as there is the naming of what is, there is relationship between the mind and what is; but when this naming process -which is memory, the very structure of the mind- is not, then what is is not. In this transformation alone is there integration. 02/03 Listen tothe question, to the meaning behind the words. Can the crude mind become sensitive? If I say my mind is crude and I try to become sensitive, the very effort to become sensitive is crudity. Please see this. Don't be intrigued, but watch it. Whereas, if I recognize that I am crude without wanting to change, without trying to become sensitive, if I begin to understand what crudeness is, observe it in my life from day to day -the greedy way I eat, the roughness with which I treat people, the pride, the arrogance, the coarseness of my habits and thoughts -then that very observation transforms what is.Similarly,if I am stupid and I say I must become intelligent, the effort to become intelligent is only a greater form of stupidity; because what is important is to understand stupidity. However much I may try to become intelligent, my stupidity will remain. I may acquire the superficial polish of learning, I may be able to quote books, repeat passages from great authors, but basically I shall still be stupid. But if I see and understand stupidity as it expresses itself in my daily life- how I behave towards my servant, how I regard my neighbor, the poor man, the rich man, the clerk- then that very awareness brings about a breaking up of stupidity. 02/04 ...Hierarchical structure offers an excellent opportunity for self-expansion. You may want brotherhood, but how can there be brotherhood if you are pursuing spiritual distinctions? You may smile at worldly titles; but when you admit the Master, the savior, the guru in the realm of the spirit, are you not carrying over the worldly attitude? Can there be hierarchical divisions or degrees in spiritual growth, in the understanding of truth, in the realization of God? Love admits no division. Either you love, or do not love; but do not make the lack of love into a long-drawn-out process whose end is love. When you know you do not love, when you are choicelessly aware of that fact, then there is a possibility of transformation; but to sedulously cultivate this distinction between the Master and the pupil, between those who have attained and those who have not, between the savior and the sinner, is to deny love. The exploiter, who is in turn exploited, finds a happy hunting-ground in this darkness and illusion....Separation between God or reality and yourself is brought about by you, by the mind that clings to the known, to certainty, to security. This separation cannot be bridged over; there is no ritual, no discipline, no sacrifice that can carry you across it; there is no savior, no Master, no guru who can lead you to the real or destroy this separation. The division is not between the real and yourself; it is in yourself....What isessential is to understand the increasing conflict of desire; and this understanding comes only through self-knowledge and constant awareness of the movements of the self. 02/05 Understanding of the self requires a great deal of intelligence, a great deal of watchfulness, alertness, watching ceaselessly, so that it does not slip away. I who am very earnest, want to dissolve the self. When I say that, I know it is possible to dissolve the self. Please be patient. The moment I say "I want to dissolve this", and in the process I follow for the dissolution of that, there is the experiencing of the self; and so, the self is strengthened. So, how is it possible for the self not to experience? One can see that creation is not at all the experience of the self. 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, as we know it. Is it possible for the mind to be quite still, in a state of nonrecognition, which is, non-experiencing, to be in a state in which creation can take place -which means, when the self is not there, when the self is absent? Am I making myself clear or not? ...The problem is this, is it not? Any movement of the mind, positive or negative, is an experience which actually strengthens the `me'. Is it possible for the mind not to recognize? That can only take place when there is complete silence, but not the silence which is an experience of the self and which therefore strengthens the self. 02/06 The searchfor power, position, authority, ambition and all the rest are the forms of the self in all its different ways. But what is important is to understand the self and I am sure you and I are convinced of it. If I may add here, let us be earnest about this matter; because I feel that if you and I as individuals, not as a group of people belonging to certain classes, certain societies, certain climatic divisions, can understand this and act upon this, then I think there will be real revolution. The moment it becomes universal and better organized, the self takes shelter in that; whereas, if you and I as individuals can love, can carry this out actually in everyday life, then the revolution that is so essential will come into being....You know what I mean by the self? By that, I mean the idea, the memory, the conclusion, the experience, the various forms of namable and unnamable intentions, the conscious endeavor to be or not to be, the accumulated memory of the unconscious, the racial, the group, the individual, the clan, and the whole of it all, whether it is projected outwardly in action, or projected spiritually as virtue; the striving after all this is the self. In it is included the competition, the desire to be. The whole process of that, is the self; and we know actually when we are faced with it, that it is an evil thing. I am using the word evil intentionally, because the self is dividing; the self is self-enclosing; its activities, however noble, are separated and isolated. We know all this. We also know that extraordinary are the moments when the self is not there, in which there is no sense of endeavor, of effort, and which happens when there is love. 02/07 Reality, truth, is not to be recognized. For truth to come, belief, knowledge, experiencing, virtue, pursuit of virtue - which is different from being virtuous- all this must go. The virtuous person who is conscious of pursuing virtue can never find reality. He may be a very decent person; that is entirely different from the man of truth, from the man who understands. To the man of truth, truth has come into being. 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 in which he is non-greedy and which he experiences, strengthens the self. That is why it is so important to be poor, not only in the things of the world, but also in belief and in knowledge. A man rich with worldly riches, or a man rich in knowledge and belief, will never know anything but darkness, and will be the center of all mischief and misery. But if you and I, as individuals, can see this whole working of the self, then we shall know what love is. I assure you that is the only reformation which can possibly change the world. Love is not the self. Self cannot recognize love. You say "I love," but then, in the very saying of it, in the very experiencing of it, love is not. But, when you know love, self is not. When there is love, self is not. 02/08 Surely, aman who is understanding life does not want beliefs. A man who loves, has no beliefs- he loves. It is the man who is consumed by the intellect who has beliefs, because intellect is always seeking security, protection; it is always avoiding danger, and therefore it builds ideas, beliefs, ideals, behind which it can take shelter. What would happen if you dealt with violence directly, now? You would be a danger to society; and because the mind foresees the danger, it says "I will achieve the ideal of non-violence ten years later which is such a fictitious, false process.... To understand what is, is more important than to create and follow ideals because ideals are false, and what is is the real. To understand what is requires an enormous capacity, a swift and unprejudiced mind. It is because we don't want to face and understand what is that we invent the many ways of escape and give them lovely names as the ideal, the belief,God. Surely, it is only when I see the false as the false that my mind is capable of perceiving what is true. A mind that is confused in the false, can never find the truth. Therefore, I must understand what is false in my relationships, in my ideas, in the things about me because to perceive the truth requires the understanding of the false. Without removing the causes of ignorance, there cannot be enlightenment; and to seek enlightenment when the mind is unenlightened is utterly empty, meaningless. Therefore, I must begin to see the false in my relationships with ideas, with people, with things. When the mind sees that which is false, then that which is true comes into being and then there is ecstasy, there is happiness. 02/09 Does belief give enthusiasm? Can enthusiasm sustain itself without a belief, and is enthusiasm at all necessary, or is a different kind of energy needed, a different kind of vitality, drive? Most of us have enthusiasm for something or other. We are very keen, very enthusiastic about concerts, about physical exercise, or going to a picnic. Unless it is nourished all the time by something or other, it fades away and we have a new enthusiasm for other things. Is there a self-sustaining force, energy, which doesn't depend on a belief?The otherquestion is: Do we need a belief of any kind, and if we do, why is it necessary? That's one of the problems involved. We don't need a belief that there is sunshine, the mountains, the rivers. We don't need a belief that we and our wives quarrel. We don't have to have a belief that life is a terrible misery with its anguish, conflict, and constant ambition; it is a fact. But we demand a belief when we want to escape from a fact into an unreality. 02/10 So, your religion, your belief in God, is an escape from actuality, and therefore it is no religion at all. The rich man who accumulates money through cruelty, through dishonesty, through cunning exploitation believes in God; and you also believe in God, you also are cunning, cruel, suspicious, envious. Is God to be found through dishonesty, through deceit, through cunning tricks of the mind? Because you collect all the sacred books and the various symbols of God, does that indicate that you are a religious person? So, religion is not escape from the fact; religion is the understanding of the fact of what you are in your everyday relationships; religion is the manner of your speech, the way you talk, the way you address your servants, the way you treat your wife, your children, and neighbors. As long as you do not understand your relationship with your neighbor, with society, with your wife and children, there must be confusion; andwhatever it does, the mind that is confused will only create more confusion, more problems and conflict. A mind that escapes from the actual, from the facts of relationship, shall never find God; a mind that is agitated by belief shall not know truth. But the mind that understands its relationship with property, with people, with ideas, the mind which no longer struggles with the problems which relationship creates, and for which the solution is not withdrawal but the understanding of love-such a mind alone can understand reality. 02/11 We realizethat life is ugly, painful, sorrowful; we want some kind of theory, some kind of speculation or satisfaction, some kind of doctrine, which will explain all this, and so we are caught in explanation, in words, in theories, and gradually, beliefs become deeply rooted and unshakable because behind those beliefs, behind those dogmas, there is the constant fear of the unknown. But we never look at that fear; we turn away from it. The stronger the beliefs, the stronger the dogmas. And when we examine these beliefs- the Christian, the Hindu, the Buddhist- we find that they divide people. Each dogma, each belief has a series of rituals, a series of compulsions which bind man and separate man. So, we start with an inquiry to find out what is true, what the significance is of this misery, this struggle, this pain; and we are soon caught up in beliefs, in rituals, in theories.Belief iscorruption because, behind belief and morality lurks the mind, the self the self growing big, powerful and strong. We consider belief in God, the belief in something, as religion. We consider that to believe is to be religious. You understand? If you do not believe, you will be considered an atheist, you will be condemned by society. One society will condemn those who believe in God, and another society will condemn those who do not. They are both the same. So, religion becomes a matter of belief- and belief acts and has a corresponding influence on the mind; the mind then can never be free. But it is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief, because your very belief projects what you think ought to be God, what you think ought to be true. 02/12 You believe in God, and another does not believe in God, so your beliefs separate you from each other. Belief throughout the world is organized as Hinduism, Buddhism, or Christianity, and so it divides man from man. We are confused, and we think that through belief we shall clear the confusion; that is, belief is superimposed on the confusion, and we hope that confusion will thereby be cleared away. But belief is merely an escape from the fact of confusion; it does not help us to face and to understand the fact but to run away from the confusion in which we are. To understand the confusion, belief is not necessary, and belief only acts as a screen between ourselves and our problems. So, religion, which is organized belief, becomes a means of escape from what is, from the fact of confusion. The man who believes in God, the man who believes in the hereafter, or who has any other form of belief, is escaping from the fact of what he is.Do you not know those who believe in God, who do puja, who repeat certain chants and words, and who in their daily life are dominating, cruel, ambitious, cheating, dishonest? Shall they find God? Are they really seeking God? Is God to be found through repetition of words, through belief? But such people believe in God, they worship God, they go to the temple every day, they do everything to avoid the fact of what they are -and such people you consider respectable because they are yourself. 02/13 One of thethings, it seems to me, that most of us eagerly accept and take for granted is the question of beliefs. I am not attacking beliefs. What we are trying to do is to find out why we accept beliefs; and if we can understand the motives, the causation of acceptance, then perhaps we may be able not only to understand why we do it, but also be free of it. One can see how political and religious beliefs, national and various other types of beliefs, do separate people, do create conflict, confusion, and antagonism which is an obvious fact; and yet we are unwilling to give them up. There is the Hindu belief, the Christian belief, the Buddhist innumerable sectarian and national beliefs, various political ideologies, all contending with one other, trying to convert one other. One can see, obviously, that belief is separating people, creating intolerance; is it possible to live without belief? One can find that out only if one can study oneself in relationship to a belief. Is it possible to live in this world without a belief not change beliefs, not substitute one belief for another, but be entirely free from all beliefs, so that one meets life anew each minute? This, after all, is the truth: to have the capacity of meeting everything anew, from moment to moment, without the conditioning reaction of the past, so that there is not the cumulative effect which acts as a barrier between oneself and that which is. 02/14 If we hadno belief, what would happen to us? Shouldn't we be very frightened of what might happen? If we had no pattern of action, based on a belief- either in God, or in communism, or in socialism, or in imperialism, or in some kind of religious formula, some dogma in which we are conditioned- we should feel utterly lost, shouldn't we? And is not this acceptance of a belief the covering up of that fear -the fear of being really nothing, of being empty? After all, 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 uncreative mind; it is merely a repetitive mind. To escape from that fear- that fear of emptiness, that fear of loneliness, that fear of stagnation, of not arriving, not succeeding, not achieving, not being something, not becoming something -is surely one of the reasons, is it not, why we accept beliefs so eagerly and greedily? And, through acceptance of belief, do we understand ourselves? On the contrary. A belief, religious or political, obviously hinders the understanding of ourselves. It acts as a screen through which we look at ourselves. And can we look at ourselves without beliefs? If we remove these beliefs, the many beliefs that one has, is there anything left to look at? 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 understand of oneself. 02/15 Why do ideas take root in our minds? Why do not facts become all-important- not ideas? Why do theories, ideas, become so significant rather than the fact? Is it that we cannot understand the fact, or have not the capacity, or are afraid of facing the fact? Therefore, ideas, speculations, theories are a means of escaping away from the fact....You may run away, you may do all kinds of things; the facts are there the fact that one is angry, the fact that one is ambitious, the fact that one is sexual, a dozen things. You may suppress them, you may transmute them, which is another form of suppression; you may control them, but they are all suppressed, controlled, disciplined with ideas....Do not ideas waste our energy? Do not ideas dull the mind? You may be clever in speculation, in quotations; but it is obviously a dull mind which quotes, that has read a lot and quotes....You remove the conflict of the opposite at one stroke if you live with the fact and therefore liberate the energy to face the fact. For most of us, contradiction is an extraordinary field in which the mind is caught. I want to do this, and I do something entirely different; but if I face the fact of wanting to do this, there is no contradiction; and therefore, at one stroke I abolish altogether all sense of the opposite, and my mind then is completely concerned with what is, and with the understanding of what is. 02/16 It is onlywhen the mind is free from idea that there can be experiencing. Ideas are not truth; and truth is something that must be experienced directly, from moment to moment. It is not an experience which you want -which is then merely sensation. Only when one can go beyond the bundle of ideas -which is the "me," which is the mind, which has a partial or complete continuity only when one can go beyond that, when thought is completely silent, is there a state of experiencing. Then one shall know what truth is. 02/17 What do wemean by idea? Surely idea is the process of thought. Is it not? Idea is a process of mentation, of thinking; and thinking is always a reaction either of the conscious or of the unconscious. Thinking is a process of verbalization which is the result of memory; thinking is a process of time. So, when action is based on the process of thinking, such action must inevitably be conditioned, isolated. Idea must oppose idea, idea must be dominated by idea. There is a gap then between action and idea. What we are trying to find out is whether it is possible for action to be without idea. We see how idea separates people. As I have already explained, knowledge and belief are essentially separating qualities. Beliefs never bind people; they always separate people; when action is based on belief or an idea or an ideal, such an action must inevitably be isolated, fragmented. Is it possible to act without the process of thought, thoughtbeing a process of time, a process of calculation, a process of self-protection, a process of belief, denial, condemnation, justification. Surely, it must have occurred to you as it has to me, whether action is at all possible without idea. 02/18 Can ideasever produce action, or do ideas merely mold thought and therefore limit action? When action is compelled by an idea, action can never liberate man. It is extraordinarily important for us to understand this point. 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 first to discover how the idea comes into being. 02/19 The worldis always close to catastrophe. But it seems to be closer now. Seeing this approaching catastrophe, most of us take shelter in idea. We think that this catastrophe, this crisis, can be solved by an ideology. Ideology is always an impediment to direct relationship, which prevents action. We want peace only as an idea, but not as an actuality. We want peace on the verbal level which is only on the thinking level, though we proudly call it the intellectual level. But the word peace is not peace. Peace can only be when the confusion which you and another make ceases. We are attached to the world of ideas and not to peace. We search for new social and political patterns and not for peace; we are concerned with the reconciliation of effects and not in putting aside the cause of war. This search will bring only answers conditioned by the past. This conditioning is what we call knowledge, experience; and the new changing facts aretranslated, interpreted, according to this knowledge. So, there is conflict between what is and the experience that has been. The past, which is knowledge, must ever be in conflict with the fact, which is ever in the present. So, this will not solve the problem but will perpetuate the conditions which have created the problem. 02/20 The idea is the result of the thought process, the thought process is the response of memory, and memory is always conditioned. Memory is always in the past, and that memory is given life in the present by a challenge. Memory has no life in itself; it comes to life in the present when confronted by a challenge. And all memory, whether dormant or active, is conditioned, is it not? Therefore there has to be quite a different approach. You have to find out for yourself, inwardly, whether you are acting on an idea, and if there can be action without ideation. 02/21 Thought must always be limited by the thinker who is conditioned; the thinker is always conditioned and is never free; if thought occurs, immediately idea follows. Idea in order to act is bound to create more confusion. Knowing all this, is it possible to act without idea? Yes, it is the way of love. Love is not an idea; it is not a sensation; it is not a memory; it is not a feeling of postponement, a self protective device. We can only be aware of the way of love when we understand the whole process of idea. Now, is it possible to abandon the other ways and know the way of love which is the only redemption? No other way, political or religious, will solve the problem. This is not a theory which you will have to think over and adopt in your life; it must be actual......When you love, is there idea? Do not accept it; just look at it, examine it, go into it profoundly; because every other way we have tried, and there is no answer to misery. Politicians may promise it; the so-called religious organizations may promise future happiness; but we have not got it now, and the future is relatively unimportant when I am hungry. We have tried every other way; and we can only know the way of love if we know the way of idea and abandon idea, which is to act. 02/22 I wonder if there is such a thing as evil? Please give your attention, go with me, let us inquire together. We say there is good and evil. There is envy and love, and we say that envy is evil and love is good. Why do we divide life, calling this good and that bad, thereby creating the conflict of the opposites? Not that there is not envy, hate, brutality in the human mind and heart, an absence of compassion, love, but why do we divide life into the thing called good and the thing called evil? Is there not actually only one thing, which is a mind that is inattentive? Surely, when there is complete attention, that is, when the mind is totally aware, alert, watchful, there is no such thing as evil or good; there is only an awakened state. Goodness then is not a quality, not a virtue, it is a state of love. When there is love, there is neither good nor bad, there is only love. When you really love somebody, you are not thinking of good or bad, your whole being is filled with that love. It is only when there is the cessation of complete attention, of love, that there comes the conflict between what I am and what I should be. Then that which I am is evil, and that which I should be is the so-called good....You watch your own mind and you will see that the moment the mind ceases to think in terms of becoming something, there is a cessation of action which is not stagnation; it is a state of total attention, which is goodness. 02/23 Are you not aware of it? Are not its actions obvious, its sorrow crushing? Who has created it but each one of us? Who is responsible for it but each one of us? As we have created good, however little, so we have created evil, however vast. Good and evil are part of us and are also independent of us. When we think-feel narrowly, enviously, with greed and hate, we are adding to the evil which turns and rends us. This problem of good and evil, this conflicting problem, is always with us as we are creating it. It has become part of us, this wanting and not wanting, loving and hating, craving and renouncing. We are continually creating this duality in which thought-feeling is caught up. Thought-feeling can go beyond and above good and its opposite only when it understands its cause -craving. In understanding merit and demerit there is freedom from both. Opposites cannot be fused and they are to be transcended through the dissolution of craving. Each opposite must be thought out, felt out, as extensively and deeply as possible, through all the layers of consciousness; through this thinking out, feeling out, a new comprehension is awakened which is not the product of craving or of time.There is evil in the world to which we are contributing as we contribute to the good. Man seems to unite more in hate than in good. A wise man realizes the cause of evil and good, and through understanding frees thought-feeling from it. 02/24 Obviouslythe present crisis throughout the world is exceptional, without precedent. There have been crises of varying types at different periods throughout history- social, national, political. Crises come and go; economic recessions, depressions, come, get modified, and continue in a different form. We know that; we are familiar with that process. Surely the present crisis is different, is it not? It is different first because we are dealing not with money nor with tangible things but with ideas. The crisis is exceptional because it is in the field of ideation. We are quarreling with ideas, we are justifying murder; everywhere in the world we are justifying murder as a means to a righteous end, which in itself is unprecedented. Before, evil was recognized to be evil, murder was recognized to be murder, but now murder is a means to achieve a noble result. Murder, whether of one person or of a group of people, is justified, because the murderer, or the group that the murderer represent, justifies it as a means of achieving a result that will be beneficial to man. That is we sacrifice the present for the future -and it does not matter what means we employ as long as our declared purpose is to produce a result that we say will be beneficial to man. Therefore, the implication is that a wrong means will produce a right end and you justify the wrong means through ideation.... We have a magnificent structure of ideas to justify evil and surely that is unprecedented. Evil is evil; it cannot bring about good. War is not a means to peace. 02/25 If I havea motive to be good, does that bring about goodness? Or is goodness something entirely devoid of this urge to be good, which is ever based on a motive? Is good the opposite of bad, the opposite of evil? Every opposite contains the seed of its own opposite, does it not? There is greed, and there is the ideal of nongreed. When the mind pursues nongreed, when it tries to be nongreedy, it is still greedy because it wants to be something. Greed implies desiring, acquiring, expanding; and when the mind sees that it does not pay to be greedy, it wants to be nongreedy, so the motive is still the same, which is to be or to acquire something. When the mind wants not to want, the root of want, of desire, is still there. So goodness is not the opposite of evil; it is a totally different state. And what is that state?Obviously,goodness has no motive because all motive is based on the self; it is the egocentric movement of the mind. So what do we mean by goodness? Surely, there is goodness only when there is total attention. Attention has no motive. When there is a motive for attention, is there attention? If I pay attention in order to acquire something, the acquisition, whether it be good or bad, is not attention it is a distraction. A division. There can be goodness only when there is a totality of attention in which there is no effort to be or not to be. 02/26 Must we know drunkenness to know sobriety? Must you go through hate in order to know what it is to be compassionate? Must you go through wars, destroying yourself and others, to know what peace is? Surely, this is an utterly false way of thinking, is it not? First you assume that there is evolution, growth, a moving from bad to good, and then you fit your thinking into that pattern. Obviously, there is physical growth, the little plant becoming the big tree; there is technological progress, the wheel evolving through centuries into the jet plane. But is there psychological progress, evolution? That is what we are discussing -whether there is a growth, an evolution of the "me," beginning with evil and ending up in good. Through a process of evolution, through time, can the "me," which is the center of evil, ever become noble, good? Obviously not. That which is evil, the psychological "me," will always remain evil. But we do not want to face that. We think that through the process of time, through growth and change, the "I" will ultimately become reality. This is our hope, that is our longing -that the "I" will be made perfect through time. What is this "I," this "me"? It is a name, a form, a bundle of memories, hopes, frustrations, longings, pains, sorrows, passing joys. We want this "me" to continue and become perfect, and so we say that beyond the "me" there is a "super-me," a higher self, a spiritual entity which is timeless, but since we have thought of it, that "spiritual" entity is still within the field of time, is it not? If we can think about it, it is obviously within the field of our reasoning. 02/27 Can the mind be free from the past, free from thought -not from the good or bad thought? How do I find out? I can only find out by seeing what the mind is occupied with. If my mind is occupied with the good or occupied with the bad, then it is only concerned with the past, it is occupied with the past. It is not free of the past. So, what is important is to find out how the mind is occupied. If it is occupied at all, it is always occupied with the past because all our consciousness is the past. The past is not only on the surface but on the highest level, and the stress on the unconscious is also the past....Can the mind be free from occupation? This means -can the mind be completely without being occupied and let memory, the thoughts good and bad, go by without choosing? The moment the mind is occupied with one thought, good or bad, then it is concerned with the past.... If you really listen -not just merely verbally, but really profoundly- then you will see that there is stability which is not of the mind, which is the freedom from the past.Yet, the past can never be put aside. There is a watching of the past as it goes by, but not occupation with the past. So the mind is free to observe and not to choose. Where there is choice in this movement of the river of memory, there is occupation; and the moment the mind is occupied, it is caught in the past; and when the mind is occupied with the past, it is incapable of seeing something real, true, new, original, uncontaminated. 02/28 "How can Iremain free from evil thoughts, evil and wayward thoughts?" ...Is there the thinker, the one apart from thought, apart from the evil, wayward thoughts? Please watch your own mind. We say, "There is the I, the me that says, "This is a wayward thought," "This is bad," "I must control this thought," "I must keep to this thought." That is what we know. Is the one, the I, the thinker, the judger, the one that judges, the censor, different from all this? Is the I different from thought, different from envy, different from evil? The I which says that it is different from this evil is everlastingly trying to overcome me, trying to push me away, trying to become something. So you have this struggle, the effort to put away thoughts, not to be wayward.We have, in the very process of thinking, created this problem of effort. Do you follow? Then you give birth to discipline, controlling thought- the I controlling the thought which is not good, the I which is trying to become nonenvious, nonviolent, to be this and to be that. So you have brought into being the very process of effort when there is the I and the thing which it is controlling. That is the actual fact of our everyday existence. 03/01 Have you ever gone into the question of psychological dependence? If you go into it very deeply, you will find that most of us are terribly lonely. Most of us have such shallow, empty minds. Most of us do not know what love means. So, out of that loneliness, out of that insufficiency, out of the privation of life, we are attached to something, attached to the family; we depend upon it. And when the wife or the husband turns away from us, we are jealous. Jealousy is not love; but the love which society acknowledges in the family is made respectable. That is another form of defense, another form of escape from ourselves. So every form of resistance breeds dependence. And a mind that is dependent can never be free.You need to be free, because you will see that a mind that is free has the essence of humility. Such a mind, which is free and therefore has humility, can learn-not a mind that resists. Learning is an extraordinary thing-to learn, not to accumulate knowledge. Accumulating knowledge is quite a different thing. What we call knowledge is comparatively easy, because that is a movement from the known to the known. But to learn is a movement from the known to the unknown - you learn only like that, do you not? 03/02 Why do wedepend? Psychologically, inwardly, we depend on a belief, on a system, on a philosophy; we ask another for a mode of conduct; we seek teachers who will give us a way of life which will lead us to some hope, some happiness. So we are always, are we not, searching for some kind of dependence, security. Is it possible for the mind ever to free itself from this sense of dependence? Which does not mean that the mind must achieve independence-that is only the reaction to dependence. We are not talking of independence, of freedom from a particular state. If we can inquire without the reaction of seeking freedom from a particular state of dependence, then we can go much more deeply into it.... We accept the necessity for dependence; we say it is inevitable. We have never questioned the whole issue at all, why each one of us seeks some kind of dependence. Is it not that we really, deep down, demand security, permanency? Being in a state of confusion, we want someone to get us out of that confusion. So, we are always concerned with how to escape or avoid the state in which we are. In the process of avoiding that state, we are bound to create some kind of dependence, which becomes our authority. If we depend on another for our security, for our inward well-being, there arise out of that dependence innumerable problems, and then we try to solve those problems-the problems of attachment. But we never question, we never go into the problem of dependence itself. Perhaps if we can really intelligently, with full awareness, go into this problem, then we may find that dependence is not the issue at all-that it is only a way of escaping from a deeper fact. 03/03 We know wedepend-on our relationship with people or on some idea or on a system of thought. Why?...Actually, I do not think dependence is the problem; I think there is some other deeper factor that makes us depend. And if we can unravel that, then both dependence and the struggle for freedom will have very little significance; then all the problems which arise through dependence will wither away. So, what is the deeper issue? Is it that the mind abhors, fears, the idea of being alone? And does the mind know that state which it avoids? ...So long as that loneliness is not really understood, felt, penetrated, dissolved-whatever word you may like to use-so long as that sense of loneliness remains, dependence is inevitable, and one can never be free; one can never find out for oneself that which is true, that which is religion. 03/04 Dependencesets going the movement of aloofness and attachment, a constant conflict without comprehension, without a release. You must become aware of the process of attachment and dependence, become aware of it without condemnation, without judgment, and then you will perceive the significance of this conflict of opposites. If you become deeply aware and consciously direct thought to comprehend the full meaning of need, of dependence, your conscious mind will be open and clear about it; and then the subconscious with its hidden motives, pursuits and intentions, will project itself into the conscious. When this happens, you must study and understand each intimation of the subconscious If you do this many times, becoming aware of the projections of the subconscious after the conscious has thought out the problem as clearly as possible, then, even though you give your attention to other matters, the conscious and the subconscious willwork out the problem of dependence, or any other problem. Thus there is established a constant awareness which will patiently and gently bring about integration; and if your health and diet are all right, this will in turn bring about fullness of being. 03/05 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 of 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 societywhose 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. 03/06 Renunciation, self-sacrifice, is not a gesture of greatness, to be praised and copied. We possess because without possession we are not. Possessions are many and varied. One who possesses no worldly things may be attached to knowledge, to ideas; another may be attached to virtue, another to experience, another to name and fame, and so on. Without possessions, the "me" is not; the "me" is the possession, the furniture, the virtue, the name. In its fear of not being, the mind is attached to name, to furniture, to value; and it will drop these in order to be at a higher level, the higher being the more gratifying, the more permanent. The fear of uncertainty, of not being, makes for attachment, for possession. When the possession is unsatisfactory or painful, we renounce it for a more pleasurable attachment. The ultimate gratifying possession is the word God, or its substitute, the State....So longas you are unwilling to be nothing, which in fact you are, you must inevitably breed sorrow and antagonism. The willingness to be nothing is not a matter of renunciation, of enforcement, inner or outer, but of seeing the truth of what is. Seeing the truth of what is brings freedom from the fear of insecurity, the fear which breeds attachment and leads to the illusion of detachment, renunciation. The love of what is is the beginning of wisdom. Love alone shares, it alone can commune; but renunciation and self-sacrifice are the ways of isolation and illusion. 03/07 As most ofus seek power in one form or another, the hierarchical principle is established, the novice and the initiate, the pupil and the Master, and even among the Masters there are degrees of spiritual growth. Most of us love to exploit and be exploited, and this system offers the means, whether hidden or open. To exploit is to be exploited. The desire to use others for your psychological necessities makes for dependence, and when you depend you must hold, possess; and what you possess, possesses you. Without dependence, subtle or gross, without possessing things, people and ideas, you are empty, a thing of no importance. You want to be something, and to avoid the gnawing fear of being nothing you belong to this or that organization, to this or that ideology, to this church or that temple; so you are exploited, and you in your turn exploit. 03/08 There is only attachment; there is no such thing as detachment. The mind invents detachment as a reaction to the pain of attachment. When you react to attachment by becoming "detached," you are attached to something else. So that whole process is one of attachment. You are attached to your wife or your husband, to your children, to ideas, to tradition, to authority, and so on; and your reaction to that attachment is detachment. The cultivation of detachment is the outcome of sorrow, pain. You want to escape from the pain of attachment, and your escape is to find something to which you think you can be attached. So there is only attachment, and it is a stupid mind that cultivates detachment. All the books say, "Be detached," but what is the truth of the matter? If you observe your own mind, you will see an extraordinary thing-that through cultivating detachment, your mind is becoming attached to something else. 03/09 We are thethings we possess, we are that to which we are attached. Attachment has no nobility. Attachment to knowledge isnot different from any other gratifying addiction. Attachment is self-absorption, whether at the lowest or at the highest level.Attachment is self-deception, it is an escape from the hollowness of the self. The things to which we are attached- property, people, ideas -become all-important, for without the many things which fill its emptiness, the self is not. The fear of not being makes for possession; and fear breeds illusion, the bondage to conclusions. Conclusions, material or ideational, prevent the fruition of intelligence, the freedom in which alone reality can come into being; and without this freedom, cunning is taken for intelligence. The ways of cunning are always complex and destructive. It is this self-protective cunning that makes for attachment; and when attachment causes pain, it is this same cunning that seeks detachment and finds pleasure in the pride and vanity of renunciation. The understanding of the ways of cunning, the ways of the self, is the beginning of intelligence. 03/10 We have all had the experience of tremendous loneliness, where books, religion, everything is gone and we are tremendously, inwardly, lonely, empty. Most of us can't face that emptiness, that loneliness, and we run away from it. Dependence is one of the things we run to, depend on, because we can't stand being alone with ourselves. We must have the radio or books or talking, incessant chatter about this and that, about art and culture. So we come to that point when we know there is this extraordinary sense of self-isolation. We may have a very good job, work furiously, write books, but inwardly there is this tremendous vacuum. We want to fill that and dependence is one of the ways. We use dependence, amusement, church work, religions, drink, women, a dozen things to fill it up, cover it up. If we see that it is absolutely futile to try to cover it up, completely futile-not verbally, not with conviction and therefore agreement and determination-but if we see the total absurdity of it ... then we are faced with a fact. It is not a question of how to be free from dependence; that's not a fact; that's only a reaction to a fact. ...Why don't I face the fact and see what happens?The problem now arises of the observer and the observed. The observer says, "I am empty; I don't like it," and runs away from it. The observer says, "I am different from the emptiness." But the observer is the emptiness; it is not emptiness seen by an observer. The observer is the observed. There is a tremendous revolution in thinking, in feeling, when that takes place. 03/11 Just try to be aware of your conditioning. You can only know it indirectly, in relation to something else. You cannot be aware of your conditioning as an abstraction, for then it is merely verbal, without much significance. We are only aware of conflict. Conflict exists when there is no integration between challenge and response. This conflict is the result of our conditioning. Conditioning is attachment: attachment to work, to tradition, to property, to people, to ideas, and so on. If there were no attachment, would there be conditioning? Of course not. So why are we attached? I am attached to my country because through identification with it I become somebody. I identify myself with my work, and the work becomes important, I am my family, my property; I am attached to them. The object of attachment offers me the means of escape from my own emptiness. Attachment is escape, and it is escape that strengthens conditioning. 03/12 To be alone, which is not a philosophy of loneliness, is obviously to be in a state of revolution against the whole setup of society-not only this society, but the communist society, the fascist, every form of society as organized brutality, organized power. And that means an extraordinary perception of the effects of power. Sir, have you noticed those soldiers rehearsing? They are not human beings any more, they are machines, they are your sons and my sons, standing there in the sun. This is happening here, in America, in Russia, and everywhere-not only at the governmental level, but also at the monastic level, belonging to monasteries, to orders, to groups who employ astonishing power. And it is only the mind which does not belong that can be alone. And aloneness is not something to be cultivated. You see this? When you see all this, you are out, and no governor or president is going to invite you to dinner. Out of that aloneness there is humility. It is this aloneness that knows love-not power. The ambitious man, religious or ordinary, will never know what love is. So, if one sees all this, then one has this quality of total living and therefore total action. This comes through self-knowledge. 03/13 To avoid suffering we cultivate detachment. Being forewarned that attachment sooner or later entails sorrow, we want to become detached. Attachment is gratifying, but perceiving the pain in it, we want to be gratified in another manner, through detachment. Detachment is the same as attachment as long as it yields gratification. So what we are really seeking is gratification, we crave to be satisfied by whatever means.We are dependent or attached because it gives us pleasure, security, power, a sense of well-being, though in it there is sorrow and fear. We seek detachment also for pleasure, in order not to be hurt, not to be inwardly wounded. Our search is for pleasure, gratification. Without condemning or justifying we must try to understand this process, for unless we understand it there is no way out of our confusion and contradiction. Can craving ever be satisfied, or is it a bottomless pit? Whether we crave for the low or for the high, craving is always craving, a burning fire, and what can be consumed by it soon becomes ashes; but craving for gratification still remains, ever burning, ever consuming, and there is no end to it. Attachment and detachment are equally binding, and both must be transcended. 03/14 In the state of passion without a cause, there is intensity free of all attachment; but when passion has a cause, there is attachment and attachment is the beginning of sorrow. Most of us are attached; we cling to a person, to a country, to a belief, to an idea, and when the object of our attachment is taken away or otherwise loses its significance, we find ourselves empty, insufficient. This emptiness we try to fill by clinging to something else, which again becomes the object of our passion. 03/15 Surely, only in relationship the process of what I am unfolds, does it not? Relationship is a mirror in which I see myself as I am; but as most of us do not like what we are, we begin to discipline, either positively or negatively, what we perceive in the mirror of relationship. That is, I discover something in relationship, in the action of relationship, and I do not like it. So, I begin to modify what I do not like, what I perceive as being unpleasant. I want to change it-which means I already have a pattern of what I should be. The moment there is a pattern of what I should be, there is no comprehension of what I am. The moment I have a picture of what I want to be, or what I should be, or what I ought not to be-a standard according to which I want to change myself-then, surely, there is no comprehension of what I am at the moment of relationship.I think itis really important to understand this, for I think this is where most of us go astray. We do not want to know what we actually are at a given moment in relationship. If we are concerned merely with self-improvement, there is no comprehension of ourselves, of what is. 03/16 Relationship is inevitably painful, which is shown in our every day existence. If in relationship there is no tension, it ceases to be relationship and merely becomes a comfortable sleep-state, an opiate-which most people want and prefer. Conflict is between this craving for comfort and the factual, between illusion and actuality. If you recognize the illusion then you can, by putting it aside, give your attention to the understanding of relationship. But if you seek security in relationship, it becomes an investment in comfort, in illusion-and the greatness of relationship is its very insecurity. By seeking security in relationship you are hindering its function, which brings its own peculiar actions and misfortunes.Surely, the function of relationship is to reveal the state of one's whole being. Relationship is a process of self-revelation, of self-knowledge. This self-revelation is painful, demanding constant adjustment, pliability of thought-emotion. It is a painful struggle, with periods of enlightened peace...But most of us avoid or put aside the tension in relationship, preferring the ease and comfort of satisfying dependency, an unchallenged security, a safe anchorage. Then family and other relationships become a refuge, the refuge of the thoughtless. When insecurity creeps into dependency, as it inevitably does, then that particular relationship is cast aside and a new one taken on in the hope of finding lasting security; but there is no security in relationship, and dependency only breeds fear. Without understanding the process of security and fear, relationship becomes a binding hindrance, a way of ignorance. Then all existence is struggle and pain, and there is no way out of it save in right thinking, which comes through self-knowledge. 03/17 The imageyou have about a person, the image you have about your politicians, the prime minister, your god, your wife, your children-that image is being looked at. And that image has been created through your relationship, or through your fears, or through your hopes. The sexual and other pleasures you have had with your wife, your husband, the anger, the flattery, the comfort, and all the things that your family life brings-a deadly life it is-have created an image about your wife or husband. With that image you look. Similarly, your wife or husband has an image about you. So the relationship between you and your wife or husband, between you and the politician is really the relationship between these two images. Right? That is a fact. How can two images which are the result of thought, of pleasure and so on, have any affection or love?So the relationship between two individuals, very close together or very far, is a relationship of images, symbols, memories. And in that, how can there be real love? 03/18 To understand relationship, there must be a passive awareness, which does not destroy relationship. On the contrary, it makes relationship much more vital, much more significant. Then there is in that relationship a possibility of real affection; there is a warmth, a sense of nearness, which is not mere sentiment or sensation. And if we can so approach or be in that relationship to everything, then our problems will be easily solved-the problems of property, the problems of possession. Because, we are that which we possess. The man who possesses money is the money. The man who identifies himself with property is the property, or the house, or the furniture. Similarly with ideas, or with people; and when there is possessiveness, there is no relationship. But most of us possess because we have nothing else, if we do not possess. We are empty shells if we do not possess, if we do not fill our life with furniture, with music, with knowledge, with this or that. And that shell makes a lot of noise, and that noise we call living; and with that we are satisfied. And when there is a disruption, a breaking away of that, then there is sorrow because then you suddenly discover yourself as you are-an empty shell, without much meaning. So, to be aware of the whole content of relationship is action; and from that action there is a possibility of true relationship, a possibility of discovering its great depth, its great significance, and of knowing what love is. 03/19 Without relationship, there is no existence: to be is to be related.... Most of us do not seem to realize this-that the world is my relationship with others, whether one or many. My problem is that of relationship. What I am, that I project; and obviously, if I do not understand myself, the whole of relationship is one of confusion in ever-widening circles. So, relationship becomes of extraordinary importance, not with the so-called mass, the crowd, but in the world of my family and friends, however small that may be-my relationship with my wife, my children, my neighbor. In a world of vast organizations, vast mobilizations of people, mass movements, we are afraid to act on a small scale; we are afraid to be little people clearing up our own patch. We say to ourselves, "What can I personally do? I must join a mass movement in order to reform." On the contrary, real revolution takes place not through mass movements but through the inward revaluation of relationship-that alone is real reformation, a radical, continuous revolution. We are afraid to begin on a small scale. Because the problem is so vast, we think we must meet it with large numbers of people, with a great organization, with mass movements. Surely, we must begin to tackle the problem on a small scale, and the small scale is the "me" and the "you." When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love. Love is the missing factor; there is a lack of affection, of warmth in relationship; and because we lack that love, that tenderness, that generosity, that mercy in relationship, we escape into mass action which produces further confusion, further misery. We fill our hearts with blueprints for world reform and do not look to that one resolving factor which is love. 03/20 The worldis not something separate from you and me; the world, society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish between each other. So you and I are the problem, and not the world, because the world is the projection of ourselves, and to understand the world we must understand ourselves. That world is not separate from us; we are the world, and our problems are the world's problems. 03/21 We want torun away from our loneliness, with its panicky fears, so we depend on another, we enrich ourselves with companionship, and so on. We are the prime movers, and other become pawns in our game; and when the pawn turns and demands something in return, we are shocked and grieved. If our own fortress is strong, without a weak spot in it, this battering from the outside is of little consequence to us. The peculiar tendencies that arise with advancing age must be understood and corrected while we are still capable of detached and tolerant self-observation and study; our fears must be observed and understood now. Our energies must be directed, not merely to the understanding of the outward pressures and demands for which we are responsible, but to the comprehension of ourselves, of our loneliness, our fears, demands, and frailties.There is no such thing as living alone, for all living is relationship; but to live without direct relationship demands high intelligence, a swifter and greater awareness for self-discovery. A "lone" existence, without this keen and flowing awareness, strengthens the already dominant tendencies, thus causing unbalance, distortion. It is now that one has to become aware of the set and peculiar habits of thought-feeling which come with age, and by understanding them make away with them. Inward riches alone bring peace and joy. 03/22 Is it possible for the mind to empty itself totally of fear? Fear of any kind breeds illusion; it makes the mind dull, shallow. Where there is fear there is obviously no freedom, and without freedom there is no love at all. And most of us have some form of fear; fear of darkness, fear of public opinion, fear of snakes, fear of physical pain, fear of old age, fear of death. We have literally dozens of fears. And is it possible to be completely free of fear?We can seewhat fear does to each one of us. It makes one tell lies; it corrupts one in various ways; it makes the mind empty, shallow. There are dark corners in the mind which can never be investigated and exposed as long as one is afraid. Physical self-protection, the instinctive urge to keep away from the venomous snake, to draw back from the precipice, to avoid falling under the tramcar, and so on, is sane, normal, healthy. But I am asking about the psychological self-protectiveness which makes one afraid of disease, of death, of an enemy. When we seek fulfillment in any form, whether through painting, through music, through relationship, or what you will, there is always fear. So, what is important is to be aware of this whole process of oneself, to observe, to learn about it, and not ask how to get rid of fear. When you merely want to get rid of fear, you will find ways and means of escaping from it, and so there can never be freedom from fear. 03/23 One is afraid of public opinion, afraid of not achieving, not fulfilling, afraid of not having the opportunity; and through it all there is this extraordinary sense of guilt-one has done a thing that one should not have done; the sense of guilt in the very act of doing; one is healthy and others are poor and unhealthy; one has food and others have no food. The more the mind is inquiring, penetrating, asking, the greater the sense of guilt, anxiety. ...Fear is the urge that seeks a Master, a guru; fear is this coating of respectability, which every one loves so dearly-to be respectable. Do you determine to be courageous to face events in life, or merely rationalize fear away, or find explanations that will give satisfaction to the mind that is caught in fear? How do you deal with it? Turn on the radio, read a book, go to a temple, cling to some form of dogma, belief?Fear is the destructive energy in man. It withers the mind, it distorts thought, it leads to all kinds of extraordinarily clever and subtle theories, absurd superstitions, dogmas and beliefs. If you see that fear is destructive, then how do you proceed to wipe the mind clean? You say that by probing into the cause of fear you would be free of fear. Is that so? Trying to uncover the cause and knowing the cause of fear does not eliminate fear. 03/24 You cannotwipe away fear without understanding, without actually seeing into the nature of time, which means thought, which means word. From that arises the question: Is there a thought without word, is there a thinking without the word which is memory? Sir, without seeing the nature of the mind, the movement of the mind, the process of self-knowing, merely saying that I must be free of it, has very little meaning. You have to take fear in the context of the whole of the mind. To see, to go into all this, you need energy. Energy does not come through eating food - that is a part of physical necessity. But to see, in the sense I am using that word, requires an enormous energy; and that energy is dissipated when you are battling with words, when you are resisting, condemning, when you are full of opinions which are preventing you from looking, seeing - your energy is all gone in that. So in the consideration of this perception, this seeing, again you open the door. 03/25 Why do wedo all this-obey, follow, copy? Why? Because, we are frightened inwardly to be uncertain. We want to be certain-we want to be certain financially, we want to be certain morally-we want to be approved, we want to be in a safe position, we want never to be confronted with trouble, pain, suffering, we want to be enclosed. So, fear, consciously or unconsciously, makes us obey the Master, the leader, the priest, the government. Fear also controls us from doing something which may be harmful to others, because we will be punished. So behind all these actions, greeds, pursuits, lurks this desire for certainty, this desire to be assured. So, without resolving fear, without being free from fear, merely to obey or to be obeyed has little significance; what has meaning is to understand this fear from day to day and how fear shows itself in different ways. It is only when there is freedom from fear that there is that inward quality ofunderstanding, that aloneness in which there is no accumulation of knowledge or of experience, and it is that alone which gives extraordinary clarity in the pursuit of the real. 03/26 Are we afraid of a fact or of an idea about the fact? Are we afraid of the thing as it is, or are we afraid of what we think it is? Take death, for example. Are we afraid of the fact of death or of the idea of death? The fact is one thing and the idea about the fact is another. Am I afraid of the word death or of the fact itself? Because I am afraid of the word, of the idea, I never understand the fact, I never look at the fact, I am never in direct relation with the fact. It is only when I am in complete communion with the fact that there is no fear. If I am not in communion with the fact, then there is fear, and there is no communion with the fact so long as I have an idea, an opinion, a theory, about the fact, so I have to be very clear whether I am afraid of the word, the idea, or the fact. If I am face-to-face with the fact, there is nothing to understand about it: the fact is there, and I can deal with it. If I am afraid of theword, then I must understand the word, go into the whole process of what the word, the term, implies.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. Thought is the product of the past; it can only exist through verbalization, through symbols, through images. So long as thought is regarding or translating the fact, there must be fear. Thought is the product of the past, it can only exist through verbalization, through symbols, through images; so long as thought is regarding or translating the fact, there must be fear. 03/27 There is physical fear. You know, when you see a snake, a wild animal, instinctively there is fear; that is a normal, healthy, natural fear. It is not fear, it is a desire to protect oneself-that is normal. But the psychological protection of oneself-that is, the desire to be always certain-breeds fear. A mind that is seeking always to be certain is a dead mind, because there is no certainty in life, there is no permanency.... When you come directly into contact with fear, there is a response of the nerves and all the rest of it. Then, when the mind is no longer escaping through words or through activity of any kind, there is no division between the observer and the thing observed as fear. It is only the mind that is escaping that separates itself from fear. But when there is a direct contract with fear, there is no observer, there is no entity that says, "I am afraid." So, the moment you are directly in contact with life, with anything, there is no division-it is this division that breeds competition, ambition, fear.So what isimportant is not "how to be free of fear?" If you seek a way, a method, a system to be rid of fear, you will be everlastingly caught in fear. But if you understand fear-which can only take place when you come directly in contact with it, as you are in contact with hunger, as you are directly in contact when you are threatened with losing your job-then you do something; only then will you find that all fear ceases-we mean all fear, not fear of this kind or of that kind. 03/28 Fear findsvarious escapes. The common variety is identification, is it not?-identification with country, with society, with an idea. Haven't you noticed how you respond when you see a procession, a military procession or a religious procession, or when the country is in danger of being invaded? You then identify yourself with the country, with a being, with an ideology. There are other times when you identify yourself with your child, with your wife, with a particular form of action, or inaction. Identification is a 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 worthwhile, with beauty, with life, with truth, with belief, with knowledge, at least temporarily, there is an escape from the "me," is there not? If I talk about "my country" I forget myself temporarily, do I not? If I can say something about God, I forget myself. If I can identify myself with my family, with a group, with a particular party, with a certain ideology, then there is a temporary escape.Do we nowknow what fear is? Is it not the non-acceptance of what is? We must understand the word acceptance. I am not using that word as meaning the effort made to accept. There is no question of accepting when I perceive what is. When I do not see clearly what is, then I bring in the process of acceptance. Therefore fear is the non-acceptance of what is. 03/29 Time meansmoving from what is to "what should be." I am afraid, but one day I shall be free of fear; therefore, time is necessary to be free of fear-at least, that is what we think. To change from what is to "what should be" involves time. Now, time implies effort in that interval between what is and "what should be." I don't like fear, and I am going to make an effort to understand, to analyze, to dissect it, or I am going to discover the cause of it, or I am going to escape totally from it. All this implies effort-and effort is what we are used to. We are always in conflict between what is and "what should be." The "what I should be" is an idea, and the idea is fictitious, it is not "what I am," which is the fact; and the "what I am" can be changed only when I understand the disorder that time creates....So, isit possible for me to be rid of fear totally, completely, on the instant? If I allow fear to continue, I will create disorder all the time; therefore, one sees that time is an element of disorder, not a means to be ultimately free of fear. So there is no gradual process of getting rid of fear, just as there is no gradual process of getting rid of the poison of nationalism. If you have nationalism and you say that eventually there will be the brotherhood of man, in the interval there are wars, there are hatreds, there is misery, there is all this appalling division between man and man; therefore, time is creating disorder. 03/30 Obviously,I look at it as an observer being angry. I say, "I am angry." At the moment of anger there is no "I"; the "I" comes in immediately afterwards - which means time. Can I look at the fact without the factor of time, which is the thought, which is the word? This happens when there is the looking without the observer. See where it has led me. I now begin to perceive a way of looking - perceiving without the opinion, the conclusion, without condemning, judging. Therefore I perceive that there can be "seeing" without thought, which is the word. So the mind is beyond the clutches of ideas, of the conflict of duality and all the rest of it. So, can I look at fear not as an isolated fact?If you isolate a fact that has not opened the door to the whole universe of the mind, then let us go back to the fact and begin again by taking another fact so that you yourself will begin to see the extraordinary thing of the mind, so that you have the key, you can open the door, you can burst into that.......By considering one fear - the fear of death, the fear of the neighbor, the fear of your spouse dominating over you, you know the whole business of domination - will that open the door? That is all that matters-not how to be free of it - because the moment you open the door, fear is completely wiped away. The mind is the result of time, and time is the word - how extraordinary to think of it! Time is thought; it is thought that breeds fear, it is thought that breeds the fear of death; and it is time which is thought, that has in its hand the whole intricacies and the subtleties of fear. 03/31 The craving to become causes fears; to be, to achieve, and so to depend engenders fear. The state of the nonfear is not negation, it is not the opposite of fear nor is it courage. In understanding the cause of fear, there is its cessation, not the becoming courageous, for in all becoming there is the seed of fear. Dependence on things, on people, or on ideas breeds fear; dependence arises from ignorance, from the lack of self-knowledge, from inward poverty; fear causes uncertainty of mind-heart, preventing communication and understanding. Through self-awareness we begin to discover and so comprehend the cause of fear, not only the superficial but the deep casual and accumulative fears. Fear is both inborn and acquired; it is related to the past, and to free thought-feeling from it, the past must be comprehended through the present. The past is ever wanting to give birth to the present which becomes the identifying memory of the "me"and the "mine," the "I." The self is the root of all fear. 04/01 There is no entity separate from craving; there is only craving, there is no one who craves. Craving takes on different masks at different times, depending on its interests. The memory of these varying interests meets the new, which brings about conflict, and so the chooser is born, establishing himself as an entity separate and distinct from craving. But the entity is not different from its qualities. The entity who tries to fill or run away from emptiness, incompleteness, loneliness, is not different from that which he is avoiding; he is it. He cannot run away from himself; all that he can do is to understand himself. He is his loneliness, his emptiness; and as long as he regards it as something separate from himself; he will be in illusion and endless conflict. When he directly experiences that he is his own loneliness, then only can there be freedom from fear. Fear exists only in relationship to an idea, and idea is the responseof memory as thought. Thought is the result of experience; and though it can ponder over emptiness, have sensations with regard to it, it cannot know emptiness directly. The word loneliness, with its memories of pain and fear, prevents the experiencing of it afresh. The word is memory, and when the word is no longer significant, then the relationship between the experiencer and the experienced is wholly different; then that relationship is direct and not through a word, through memory; then the experiencer is the experience, which alone brings freedom from fear. 04/02 We have to understand desire; and it is very difficult to understand something which is so vital, so demanding, so urgent because in the very fulfilment of desire passion is engendered, with the pleasure and the pain of it. And if one is to understand desire, obviously, there must be no choice. You cannot judge desire as being good or bad, noble or ignoble, or say, "I will keep this desire and deny that one." All that must be set aside if we are to find out the truth of desire-the beauty of it, the ugliness or whatever it may be. 04/03 Let us goon to consider desire. We know, do we not, the desire which contradicts itself, which is tortured, pulling in different directions; the pain, the turmoil, the anxiety of desire, and the disciplining, the controlling. And in the everlasting battle with it we twist it out of all shape and recognition; but it is there, constantly watching, waiting, pushing. Do what you will, sublimate it, escape from it, deny it or accept it, give it full rein-it is always there. And we know how the religious teachers and others have said that we should be desireless, cultivate detachment, be free from desire-which is really absurd, because desire has to be understood, not destroyed. If you destroy desire, you may destroy life itself. If you pervert desire, shape it, control it, dominate it, suppress it, you may be destroying something extraordinarily beautiful. 04/04 ....What happens if you do not condemn desire, do not judge it as being good or bad, but simply be aware of it? I wonder if you know what it means to be aware of something? Most of us are not aware because we have become so accustomed to condemning, judging, evaluating, identifying, choosing. Choice obviously prevents awareness because choice is always made as a result of conflict. To be aware when you enter a room, to see all the furniture, the carpet or its absence, and so on-just to see it, to be aware of it all without any sense of judgment-is very difficult. Have you ever tried to look at a person, a flower, at an idea, an emotion, without any choice, any judgment?And if onedoes the same thing with desire, if one lives with it not denying it or saying, "What shall I do with this desire? It is so ugly, so rampant, so violent," not giving it a name, a symbol, not covering it with a word-then, is it any longer the cause of turmoil? Is desire then something to be put away, destroyed? We want to destroy it because one desire tears against another creating conflict, misery and contradiction; and one can see how one tries to escape from this everlasting conflict. So can one be aware of the totality of desire? What I mean by totality is not just one desire or many desires, but the total quality of desire itself. 04/05 You see abeautiful sunset, a lovely tree, a river that has a wide, curving movement, or a beautiful face, and to look at it gives great pleasure, delight. What is wrong with that? It seems to me the confusion and the misery begin when that face, that river, that cloud, that mountain becomes a memory, and this memory then demands a greater continuity of pleasure; we want such things repeated. We all know this. I have had a certain pleasure, or you have had a certain delight in something, and we want it repeated. Whether it be sexual, artistic, intellectual, or something not quite of this character, we want it repeated-and I think that is where pleasure begins to darken the mind and create values which are false, not actual.What matters is to understand pleasure, not try to get rid of it that is too stupid. Nobody can get rid of pleasure. But to understand the nature and the structure of pleasure is essential; because if life is only pleasure, and if that is what one wants, then with pleasure go the misery, the confusion, the illusions, the false values which we create, and therefore there is no clarity. 04/06 ...I haveto find out why desire has such potency in my life. It may be right or it may not be right. I have to find out. I see that. Desire arises, which is a reaction, which is a healthy, normal reaction; otherwise, I would be dead. I see a beautiful thing and I say, "By Jove, I want that." If I didn't, I'd be dead. But in the constant pursuit of it there is pain. That's my problem - there is pain as well as pleasure. I see a beautiful woman, and she is beautiful; it would be most absurd to say, "No, she's not." This is a fact. But what gives continuity to the pleasure? Obviously it is thought, thinking about it...I think about it. It is no longer the direct relationship with the object, which is desire, but thought now increases that desire by thinking about it, by having images, pictures, ideas......Thoughtcomes in and says, "Please, you must have it; that's growth; that is important; that is not important; this is vital for your life; this is not vital for your life."But I canlook at it and have a desire, and that's the end of it, without interference of thought. 04/07 Have you ever tried dying to a pleasure voluntarily, not forcibly? Ordinarily when you die you don't want to; death comes and takes you away; it is not a voluntary act, except in suicide. But have you ever tried dying voluntarily, easily, felt that sense of the abandonment of pleasure? Obviously not! At present your ideals, your pleasures, your ambitions are the things which give so-called significance to them. Life is living, abundance, fullness, abandonment, not a sense of the 'I' having significance. That is mere intellection. If you experiment with dying to little things-that is good enough. Just to die to little pleasures-with ease, with comfort, with a smile-is enough, for then you will see that your mind is capable of dying to many things, dying to all memories. Machines are taking over the functions of memory-the computers-but the human mind is something more than a merely mechanical habit of association and memory. But it cannot be that something else if it does not die to everything it knows.Now to seethe truth of all this, a young mind is essential, a mind that is not merely functioning in the field of time. The young mind dies to everything. Can you see the truth of that immediately, feel the truth of it instantly? You may not see the whole extraordinary significance of it, the immense subtlety, the beauty of that dying, the richness of it, but even to listen to it sows the seed, and the significance of these words takes root-not only at the superficial, conscious level, but right through all the unconscious. 04/08 Sex is a problem because it would seem that in that act there is complete absence of the self. In that moment you are happy, because there is the cessation of self-consciousness, of the 'me'; and desiring more of it- more of the abnegation of the self in which there is complete happiness, without the past or the future demanding that complete happiness through full fusion, integration-naturally it becomes all-important. Isn't that so? Because it is something that gives me unadulterated joy, complete self forgetfulness, I want more and more of it. Now, why do I want more of it? Because, everywhere else I am in conflict, everywhere else, at all the different levels of existence, there is the strengthening of the self. Economically, socially, religiously, there is the constant thickening of self-consciousness, which is conflict. After all, you are self-conscious only when there is conflict. Self-consciousness is in its very nature the result of conflict....So, the problem is not sex, surely, but how to be free from the self. You have tasted that state of being in which the self is not, if only for a few seconds, if only for a day, or what you will; and where the self is, there is conflict, there is misery, there is strife. So, there is the constant longing for more of that self-free state. 04/09 What do wemean by the problem of sex? Is it the act, or is it a thought about the act? Surely, it is not the act. 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. ....Why do you build it up, which you are obviously doing? The cinemas, the magazines, the stories, the way women dress, everything is building up your thought of sex. And why does