Capable of preventing free radicals

man's search — the tortured mind — thetraditional approach — the trap of respectability — the human being and the individual — thebattle of existence — the basic nature of man — responsibility — truth — self-transformation— dissipation of energy — freedom from authority man has throughout the ages been seeking somethingbeyond himself, beyond material welfare—something we call truth or god or reality, a timelessstate—something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption. man has always asked the question: what isit all about? has life any meaning at all? he sees the enormous confusion of life, thebrutalities, the revolts, the wars, the endless

divisions of religion, ideology and nationality,and with a sense of deep abiding frustration he asks, what is one to do, what is this thingwe call living, is there anything beyond it? and not finding this nameless thing of a thousandnames which he has always sought, he has cultivated faith—faith in a saviour or an ideal—andfaith invariably breeds violence. in this constant battle which we call living,we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up,whether it be a communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviouras part of our tradition as hindus or muslims or christians or whatever we happen to be.we look to someone to tell us what is right or wrong behaviour, what is right or wrongthought, and in following this pattern our

conduct and our thinking become mechanical,our responses automatic. we can observe this very easily in ourselves. for centuries we have been spoon-fed by ourteachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints. we say, 'tell me all about it—whatlies beyond the hills and the mountains and the earth?' and we are satisfied with theirdescriptions, which means that we live on words and our life is shallow and empty. weare secondhand people. we have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations,our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. we are theresult of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we havediscovered for ourselves; nothing original,

pristine, clear. throughout theological history we have beenassured by religious leaders that if we perform certain rituals, repeat certain prayers ormantras, conform to certain patterns, suppress our desires, control our thoughts, sublimateour passions, limit our appetites and refrain from sexual indulgence, we shall, after sufficienttorture of the mind and body, find something beyond this little life. and that is whatmillions of so-called religious people have done through the ages, either in isolation,going off into the desert or into the mountains or a cave or wandering from village to villagewith a begging bowl, or, in a group, joining a monastery, forcing their minds to conformto an established pattern. but a tortured

mind, a broken mind, a mind which wants toescape from all turmoil, which has denied the outer world and been made dull throughdiscipline and conformity—such a mind, however long it seeks, will find only according toits own distortion. so to discover whether there actually is oris not something beyond this anxious, guilty, fearful, competitive existence, it seems tome that one must have a completely different approach altogether. the traditional approachis from the periphery inwards, and through time, practice and renunciation, graduallyto come upon that inner flower, that inner beauty and love—in fact to do everythingto make oneself narrow, petty and shoddy; peel off little by little; take time; tomorrowwill do, next life will do—and when at last

one comes to the centre one finds there isnothing there, because one's mind has been made incapable, dull and insensitive. having observed this process, one asks oneself,is there not a different approach altogether—that is, is it not possible to explode from thecentre? the world accepts and follows the traditionalapproach. the primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promisedby another; we mechanically follow somebody who will assure us a comfortable spirituallife. it is a most extraordinary thing that although most of us are opposed to politicaltyranny and dictatorship, we inwardly accept the authority, the tyranny, of another totwist our minds and our way of life. so if

we completely reject, not intellectually butactually, all so-called spiritual authority, all ceremonies, rituals and dogmas, it meansthat we stand alone and are already in conflict with society; we cease to be respectable humanbeings. a respectable human being cannot possibly come near to that infinite, immeasurable,reality. you have now started by denying somethingabsolutely false—the traditional approach—but if you deny it as a reaction you will havecreated another pattern in which you will be trapped; if you tell yourself intellectuallythat this denial is a very good idea but do nothing about it, you cannot go any further.if you deny it, however, because you understand the stupidity and immaturity of it, if youreject it with tremendous intelligence, because

you are free and not frightened, you willcreate a great disturbance in yourself and around you but you will step out of the trapof respectability. then you will find that you are no longer seeking. that is the firstthing to learn—not to seek. when you seek you are really only window-shopping. the question of whether or not there is agod or truth or reality, or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books,by priests, philosophers or saviours. nobody and nothing can answer the question but youyourself and that is why you must know yourself. immaturity lies only in total ignorance ofself. to understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom.

and what is yourself, the individual you?i think there is a difference between the human being and the individual. the individualis a local entity, living in a particular country, belonging to a particular culture,particular society, particular religion. the human being is not a local entity. he is everywhere.if the individual merely acts in a particular corner of the vast field of life, then hisaction is totally unrelated to the whole. so one has to bear in mind that we are talkingof the whole not the part, because in the greater the lesser is, but in the lesser thegreater is not. the individual is the little conditioned, miserable, frustrated entity,satisfied with his little gods and his little traditions, whereas a human being is concernedwith the total welfare, the total misery and

total confusion of the world. we human beings are what we have been formillions of years—colossally greedy, envious, aggressive, jealous, anxious and despairing,with occasional flashes of joy and affection. we are a strange mixture of hate, fear andgentleness; we are both violence and peace. there has been outward progress from the bullockcart to the jet plane but psychologically the individual has not changed at all, andthe structure of society throughout the world has been created by individuals. the outwardsocial structure is the result of the inward psychological structure of our human relationships,for the individual is the result of the total experience, knowledge and conduct of man.each one of us is the storehouse of all the

past. the individual is the human who is allmankind. the whole history of man is written in ourselves. do observe what is actually taking place withinyourself and outside yourself in the competitive culture in which you live with its desirefor power, position, prestige, name, success and all the rest of it—observe the achievementsof which you are so proud, this whole field you call living in which there is conflictin every form of relationship, breeding hatred, antagonism, brutality and endless wars. thisfield, this life, is all we know, and being unable to understand the enormous battle ofexistence we are naturally afraid of it and find escape from it in all sorts of subtleways. and we are frightened also of the unknown—frightened

of death, frightened of what lies beyond tomorrow.so we are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. that is our daily life and inthat there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theologicalconcept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of what is. all outward forms of change brought aboutby wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to changethe basic nature of man and therefore of society. as human beings living in this monstrouslyugly world, let us ask ourselves, can this society, based on competition, brutality andfear, come to an end? not as an intellectual conception, not as a hope, but as an actualfact, so that the mind is made fresh, new

and innocent and can bring about a differentworld altogether? it can only happen, i think, if each one of us recognizes the central factthat we, as individuals, as human beings, in whatever part of the world we happen tolive or whatever culture we happen to belong to, are totally responsible for the wholestate of the world. we are each one of us responsible for everywar because of the aggressiveness of our own lives, because of our nationalism, our selfishness,our gods, our prejudices, our ideals, all of which divide us. and only when we realize,not intellectually but actually, as actually as we would recognize that we are hungry orin pain, that you and i are responsible for all this existing chaos, for all the miserythroughout the entire world because we have

contributed to it in our daily lives and arepart of this monstrous society with its wars, divisions, its ugliness, brutality and greed—onlythen will we act. but what can a human being do—what can youand i do—to create a completely different society? we are asking ourselves a very seriousquestion. is there anything to be done at all? what can we do? will somebody tell us?people have told us. the so-called spiritual leaders, who are supposed to understand thesethings better than we do, have told us by trying to twist and mould us into a new pattern,and that hasn't led us very far; sophisticated and learned men have told us and that hasled us no further. we have been told that all paths lead to truth—you have your pathas a hindu and someone else has his path as

a christian and another as a muslim, and theyall meet at the same door—which is, when you look at it, so obviously absurd. truthhas no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. a dead thing has a path to itbecause it is static, but when you see that truth is something living, moving, which hasno resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher,no philosopher, nobody can lead you to—then you will also see that this living thing iswhat you actually are—your anger, your brutality, your violence, your despair, the agony andsorrow you live in. in the understanding of all this is the truth, and you can understandit only if you know how to look at those things in your life. and you cannot look throughan ideology, through a screen of words, through

hopes and fears. so you see that you cannot depend upon anybody.there is no guide, no teacher, no authority. there is only you—your relationship withothers and with the world—there is nothing else. when you realize this, it either bringsgreat despair, from which comes cynicism and bitterness, or, in facing the fact that youand nobody else are responsible for the world and for yourself, for what you think, whatyou feel, how you act, all self-pity goes. normally we thrive on blaming others, whichis a form of self-pity. can you and i, then, bring about in ourselveswithout any outside influence, without any persuasion, without any fear of punishment—canwe bring about in the very essence of our

being a total revolution, a psychologicalmutation, so that we are no longer brutal, violent, competitive, anxious, fearful, greedy,envious and all the rest of the manifestations of our nature which have built up the rottensociety in which we live our daily lives? it is important to understand from the verybeginning that i am not formulating any philosophy or any theological structure of ideas or theologicalconcepts. it seems to me that all ideologies are utterly idiotic. what is important isnot a philosophy of life but to observe what is actually taking place in our daily life,inwardly and outwardly. if you observe very closely what is taking place and examine it,you will see that it is based on an intellectual conception, and the intellect is not the wholefield of existence; it is a fragment, and

a fragment, however cleverly put together,however ancient and traditional, is still a small part of existence whereas we haveto deal with the totality of life. and when we look at what is taking place in the worldwe begin to understand that there is no outer and inner process; there is only one unitaryprocess, it is a whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outerand the outer reacting again on the inner. to be able to look at this seems to me allthat is needed, because if we know how to look, then the whole thing becomes very clear,and to look needs no philosophy, no teacher. nobody need tell you how to look. you justlook. can you then, seeing this whole picture, seeingit not verbally but actually, can you easily,

spontaneously, transform yourself? that isthe real issue. is it possible to bring about a complete revolution in the psyche? i wonder what your reaction is to such a question?you may say, 'i don't want to change', and most people don't, especially those who arefairly secure socially and economically or who hold dogmatic beliefs and are contentto accept themselves and things as they are or in a slightly modified form. with thosepeople we are not concerned. or you may say more subtly, 'well, it's too difficult, it'snot for me', in which case you will have already blocked yourself, you will have ceased toenquire and it will be no use going any further. or else you may say, 'i see the necessityfor a fundamental inward change in myself

but how am i to bring it about? please showme the way, help me towards it.' if you say that, then what you are concerned with isnot change itself; you are not really interested in a fundamental revolution: you are merelysearching for a method, a system, to bring about change. if i were foolish enough to give you a systemand if you were foolish enough to follow it, you would merely be copying, imitating, conforming,accepting, and when you do that you have set up in yourself the authority of another andhence there is conflict between you and that authority. you feel you must do such and sucha thing because you have been told to do it and yet you are incapable of doing it. youhave your own particular inclinations, tendencies

and pressures which conflict with the systemyou think you ought to follow and therefore there is a contradiction. so you will leada double life between the ideology of the system and the actuality of your daily existence.in trying to conform to the ideology, you suppress yourself—whereas what is actuallytrue is not the ideology but what you are. if you try to study yourself according toanother you will always remain a secondhand human being. a man who says, 'i want to change, tell mehow to', seems very earnest, very serious, but he is not. he wants an authority whomhe hopes will bring about order in himself. but can authority ever bring about inwardorder? order imposed from without must always

breed disorder. you may see the truth of thisintellectually but can you actually apply it so that your mind no longer projects anyauthority, the authority of a book, a teacher, a wife or husband, a parent, a friend or ofsociety? because we have always functioned within the pattern of a formula, the formulabecomes the ideology and the authority; but the moment you really see that the question,'how can i change?' sets up a new authority, you have finished with authority for ever. let us state it again clearly: i see thati must change completely from the roots of my being; i can no longer depend on any traditionbecause tradition has brought about this colossal laziness, acceptance and obedience; i cannotpossibly look to another to help me to change,

not to any teacher, any god, any belief, anysystem, any outside pressure or influence. what then takes place? first of all, can you reject all authority?if you can it means that you are no longer afraid. then what happens? when you rejectsomething false which you have been carrying about with you for generations, when you throwoff a burden of any kind, what takes place? you have more energy, haven't you? you havemore capacity, more drive, greater intensity and vitality. if you do not feel this, thenyou have not thrown off the burden, you have not discarded the dead weight of authority. but when you have thrown it off and have thisenergy in which there is no fear at all—no

fear of making a mistake, no fear of doingright or wrong—then is not that energy itself the mutation? we need a tremendous amountof energy and we dissipate it through fear but when there is this energy which comesfrom throwing off every form of fear, that energy itself produces the radical inwardrevolution. you do not have to do a thing about it. so you are left with yourself, and that isthe actual state for a man to be who is very serious about all this; and as you are nolonger looking to anybody or anything for help, you are already free to discover. andwhen there is freedom, there is energy; and when there is freedom it can never do anythingwrong. freedom is entirely different from

revolt. there is no such thing as doing rightor wrong when there is freedom. you are free and from that centre you act. and hence thereis no fear, and a mind that has no fear is capable of great love. and when there is loveit can do what it will. what we are now going to do, therefore, isto learn about ourselves, not according to me or to some analyst or philosopher—becauseif we learn about ourselves according to someone else, we learn about them, not ourselves—weare going to learn what we actually are. having realized that we can depend on no outsideauthority in bringing about a total revolution within the structure of our own psyche, thereis the immensely greater difficulty of rejecting our own inward authority, the authority ofour own particular little experiences and

accumulated opinions, knowledge, ideas andideals. you had an experience yesterday which taught you something and what it taught youbecomes a new authority—and that authority of yesterday is as destructive as the authorityof a thousand years. to understand ourselves needs no authority either of yesterday orof a thousand years because we are living things, always moving, flowing, never resting.when we look at ourselves with the dead authority of yesterday we will fail to understand theliving movement and the beauty and quality of that movement. to be free of all authority, of your own andthat of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh,always young, innocent, full of vigour and

passion. it is only in that state that onelearns and observes. and for this a great deal of awareness is required, actual awarenessof what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it shouldor should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority,a censor. so now we are going to investigate ourselvestogether—not one person explaining while you read, agreeing or disagreeing with himas you follow the words on the page, but taking a journey together, a journey of discoveryinto the most secret corners of our minds. and to take such a journey we must travellight; we cannot be burdened with opinions, prejudices and conclusions—all that oldfurniture we have collected for the last two

thousand years and more. forget all you knowabout yourself; forget all you have ever thought about yourself; we are going to start as ifwe knew nothing. it rained last night heavily, and now theskies are beginning to clear; it is a new fresh day. let us meet that fresh day as ifit were the only day. let us start on our journey together with all the remembranceof yesterday left behind—and begin to understand ourselves for the first time. ii learning about ourselves — simplicity andhumility — conditioning if you think it is important to know aboutyourself only because i or someone else has

told you it is important, then i am afraidall communication between us comes to an end. but if we agree that it is vital that we understandourselves completely, then you and i have quite a different relationship, then we canexplore together with a happy, careful and intelligent enquiry. i do not demand your faith; i am not settingmyself up as an authority. i have nothing to teach you—no new philosophy, no new system,no new path to reality; there is no path to reality any more than to truth. all authorityof any kind, especially in the field of thought and understanding, is the most destructive,evil thing. leaders destroy the followers and followers destroy the leaders. you haveto be your own teacher and your own disciple.

you have to question everything that man hasaccepted as valuable, as necessary. if you do not follow somebody you feel verylonely. be lonely then. why are you frightened of being alone? because you are faced withyourself as you are and you find that you are empty, dull, stupid, ugly, guilty andanxious—a petty, shoddy, secondhand entity. face the fact; look at it, do not run awayfrom it. the moment you run away fear begins. in enquiring into ourselves we are not isolatingourselves from the rest of the world. it is not an unhealthy process. man throughout theworld is caught up in the same daily problems as ourselves, so in enquiring into ourselveswe are not being in the least neurotic because there is no difference between the individualand the collective. that is an actual fact.

i have created the world as i am. so don'tlet us get lost in this battle between the part and the whole. i must become aware of the total field ofmy own self, which is the consciousness of the individual and of society. it is onlythen, when the mind goes beyond this individual and social consciousness, that i can becomea light to myself that never goes out. now where do we begin to understand ourselves?here am i, and how am i to study myself, observe myself, see what is actually taking placeinside myself? i can observe myself only in relationship because all life is relationship.it is no use sitting in a corner meditating about myself. i cannot exist by myself. iexist only in relationship to people, things

and ideas, and in studying my relationshipto outward things and people, as well as to inward things, i begin to understand myself.every other form of understanding is merely an abstraction and i cannot study myself inabstraction; i am not an abstract entity; therefore i have to study myself in actuality—asi am, not as i wish to be. understanding is not an intellectual process.accumulating knowledge about yourself and learning about yourself are two differentthings, for the knowledge you accumulate about yourself is always of the past and a mindthat is burdened with the past is a sorrowful mind. learning about yourself is not likelearning a language or a technology or a science—then you obviously have to accumulate and remember;it would be absurd to begin all over again—but

in the psychological field learning aboutyourself is always in the present and knowledge is always in the past, and as most of us livein the past and are satisfied with the past, knowledge becomes extraordinarily importantto us. that is why we worship the erudite, the clever, the cunning. but if you are learningall the time, learning every minute, learning by watching and listening, learning by seeingand doing, then you will find that learning is a constant movement without the past. if you say you will learn gradually aboutyourself, adding more and more, little by little, you are not studying yourself nowas you are but through acquired knowledge. learning implies a great sensitivity. thereis no sensitivity if there is an idea, which

is of the past, dominating the present. thenthe mind is no longer quick, pliable, alert. most of us are not sensitive even physically.we overeat, we do not bother about the right diet, we oversmoke and drink so that our bodiesbecome gross and insensitive; the quality of attention in the organism itself is madedull. how can there be a very alert, sensitive, clear mind if the organism itself is dulland heavy? we may be sensitive about certain things that touch us personally but to becompletely sensitive to all the implications of life demands that there be no separationbetween the organism and the psyche. it is a total movement. to understand anything you must live withit, you must observe it, you must know all

its content, its nature, its structure, itsmovement. have you ever tried living with yourself? if so, you will begin to see thatyourself is not a static state, it is a fresh living thing. and to live with a living thingyour mind must also be alive. and it cannot be alive if it is caught in opinions, judgementsand values. in order to observe the movement of your ownmind and heart, of your whole being, you must have a free mind, not a mind that agrees anddisagrees, taking sides in an argument, disputing over mere words, but rather following withan intention to understand—a very difficult thing to do because most of us don't knowhow to look at, or listen to, our own being any more than we know how to look at the beautyof a river or listen to the breeze among the

trees. when we condemn or justify we cannot see clearly,nor can we when our minds are endlessly chattering; then we do not observe what is; we look onlyat the projections we have made of ourselves. each of us has an image of what we think weare or what we should be, and that image, that picture, entirely prevents us from seeingourselves as we actually are. it is one of the most difficult things inthe world to look at anything simply. because our minds are very complex we have lost thequality of simplicity. i don't mean simplicity in clothes or food, wearing only a loinclothor breaking a record fasting or any of that immature nonsense the saints cultivate, butthe simplicity that can look directly at things

without fear—that can look at ourselvesas we actually are without any distortion—to say when we lie we lie, not cover it up orrun away from it. also in order to understand ourselves we needa great deal of humility. if you start by saying, 'i know myself', you have alreadystopped learning about yourself; or if you say, 'there is nothing much to learn aboutmyself because i am just a bundle of memories, ideas, experiences and traditions', then youhave also stopped learning about yourself. the moment you have achieved anything youcease to have that quality of innocence and humility; the moment you have a conclusionor start examining from knowledge, you are finished, for then you are translating everyliving thing in terms of the old. whereas

if you have no foothold, if there is no certainty,no achievement, there is freedom to look, to achieve. and when you look with freedomit is always new. a confident man is a dead but how can we be free to look and learn whenour minds from the moment we are born to the moment we die are shaped by a particular culturein the narrow pattern of the 'me'? for centuries we have been conditioned by nationality, caste,class, tradition, religion, language, education, literature, art, custom, convention, propagandaof all kinds, economic pressure, the food we eat, the climate we live in, our family,our friends, our experiences—every influence you can think of—and therefore our responsesto every problem are conditioned. are you aware that you are conditioned? thatis the first thing to ask yourself, not how

to be free of your conditioning. you may neverbe free of it, and if you say, 'i must be free of it', you may fall into another trapof another form of conditioning. so are you aware that you are conditioned? do you knowthat even when you look at a tree and say, 'that is an oak tree', or 'that is a banyantree', the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind thatthe word comes between you and actually seeing the tree? to come in contact with the treeyou have to put your hand on it and the word will not help you to touch it. how do you know you are conditioned? whattells you? what tells you you are hungry?—not as a theory but the actual fact of hunger?in the same way, how do you discover the actual

fact that you are conditioned? isn't it byyour reaction to a problem, a challenge? you respond to every challenge according to yourconditioning and your conditioning being inadequate will always react inadequately. when you become aware of it, does this conditioningof race, religion and culture bring a sense of imprisonment? take only one form of conditioning,nationality, become seriously, completely aware of it and see whether you enjoy it orrebel against it, and if you rebel against it, whether you want to break through allconditioning. if you are satisfied with your conditioning you will obviously do nothingabout it, but if you are not satisfied when you become aware of it, you will realize thatyou never do anything without it. never! and

therefore you are always living in the pastwith the dead. you will be able to see for yourself how youare conditioned only when there is a conflict in the continuity of pleasure or the avoidanceof pain. if everything is perfectly happy around you, your wife loves you, you loveher, you have a nice house, nice children and plenty of money, then you are not awareof your conditioning at all. but when there is a disturbance—when your wife looks atsomeone else or you lose your money or are threatened with war or any other pain or anxiety—thenyou know you are conditioned. when you struggle against any kind of disturbance or defendyourself against any outer or inner threat, then you know you are conditioned. and asmost of us are disturbed most of the time,

either superficially or deeply, that verydisturbance indicates that we are conditioned. so long as the animal is petted he reactsnicely, but the moment he is antagonized the whole violence of his nature comes out. we are disturbed about life, politics, theeconomic situation, the horror, the brutality, the sorrow in the world as well as in ourselves,and from that we realize how terribly narrowly conditioned we are. and what shall we do?accept that disturbance and live with it as most of us do? get used to it as one getsused to living with a backache? put up with it? there is a tendency in all of us to put upwith things, to get used to them, to blame

them on circumstances. 'ah, if things wereright i would be different', we say, or, 'give me the opportunity and i will fulfil myself',or, 'i am crushed by the injustice of it all', always blaming our disturbances on othersor on our environment or on the economic situation. if one gets used to disturbance it means thatone's mind has become dull, just as one can get so used to beauty around one that oneno longer notices it. one gets indifferent, hard and callous, and one's mind becomes dullerand duller. if we do not get used to it we try to escape from it by taking some kindof drug, joining a political group, shouting, writing, going to a football match or to atemple or church or finding some other form of amusement.

why is it that we escape from actual facts?we are afraid of death—i am just taking that as an example—and we invent all kindsof theories, hopes, beliefs, to disguise the fact of death, but the fact is still there.to understand a fact we must look at it, not run away from it. most of us are afraid ofliving as well as of dying. we are afraid for our family, afraid of public opinion,of losing our job, our security, and hundreds of other things. the simple fact is that weare afraid, not that we are afraid of this or that. now why cannot we face that fact? you can face a fact only in the present andif you never allow it to be present because you are always escaping from it, you can neverface it, and because we have cultivated a

whole network of escapes we are caught inthe habit of escape. now, if you are at all sensitive, at all serious,you will not only be aware of your conditioning but you will also be aware of the dangersit results in, what brutality and hatred it leads to. why, then, if you see the dangerof your conditioning, don't you act? is it because you are lazy, laziness being lackof energy? yet you will not lack energy if you see an immediate physical danger likea snake in your path, or a precipice, or a fire. why, then, don't you act when you seethe danger of your conditioning? if you saw the danger of nationalism to your own security,wouldn't you act? the answer is you don't see. through an intellectualprocess of analysis you may see that nationalism

leads to self-destruction but there is noemotional content in that. only when there is an emotional content do you become vital. if you see the danger of your conditioningmerely as an intellectual concept, you will never do anything about it. in seeing a dangeras a mere idea there is conflict between the idea and action and that conflict takes awayyour energy. it is only when you see the conditioning and the danger of it immediately, and as youwould see a precipice, that you act. so seeing is acting. most of us walk through life inattentively,reacting unthinkingly according to the environment in which we have been brought up, and suchreactions create only further bondage, further

conditioning, but the moment you give yourtotal attention to your conditioning you will see that you are free from the past completely,that it falls away from you naturally. iii consciousness — the totality of life — awareness when you become aware of your conditioningyou will understand the whole of your consciousness. consciousness is the total field in whichthought functions and relationships exist. all motives, intentions, desires, pleasures,fears, inspirations, longings, hopes, sorrows, joys are in that field. but we have come todivide the consciousness into the active and the dormant, the upper and lower levels—thatis, all the daily thoughts, feelings and activities

on the surface and below them the so-calledsubconscious, the things with which we are not familiar, which express themselves occasionallythrough certain intimations, intuitions and dreams. we are occupied with one little corner ofconsciousness which is most of our life; the rest, which we call the subconscious, withall its motives, its fears, its racial and inherited qualities, we do not even know howto get into. now i am asking you, is there such a thing as the subconscious at all? weuse that word very freely. we have accepted that there is such a thing and all the phrasesand jargon of the analysts and psychologists have seeped into the language; but is theresuch a thing? and why is it that we give such

extraordinary importance to it? it seems tome that it is as trivial and stupid as the conscious mind—as narrow, bigoted, conditioned,anxious and tawdry. so is it possible to be totally aware of thewhole field of consciousness and not merely a part, a fragment, of it? if you are ableto be aware of the totality, then you are functioning all the time with your total attention,not partial attention. this is important to understand because when you are being totallyaware of the whole field of consciousness there is no friction. it is only when youdivide consciousness, which is all thought, feeling and action, into different levelsthat there is friction. we live in fragments. you are one thing atthe office, another at home; you talk about

democracy and in your heart you are autocratic;you talk about loving your neighbours, yet kill him with competition; there is one partof you working, looking, independently of the other. are you aware of this fragmentaryexistence in yourself? and is it possible for a brain that has broken up its own functioning,its own thinking, into fragments—is it possible for such a brain to be aware of the wholefield? is it possible to look at the whole of consciousness completely, totally, whichmeans to be a total human being? if, in order to try to understand the wholestructure of the 'me', the self, with all its extraordinary complexity, you go stepby step, uncovering layer by layer, examining every thought, feeling and motive, you willget caught up in the analytical process which

may take you weeks, months, years—and whenyou admit time into the process of understanding yourself, you must allow for every form ofdistortion because the self is a complex entity, moving, living, struggling, wanting, denying,with pressures and stresses and influences of all sorts continually at work on it. soyou will discover for yourself that this is not the way; you will understand that theonly way to look at yourself is totally, immediately, without time; and you can see the totalityof yourself only when the mind is not fragmented. what you see in totality is the truth. now can you do that? most of us cannot becausemost of us have never approached the problem so seriously, because we have never reallylooked at ourselves. never. we blame others,

we explain things away or we are frightenedto look. but when you look totally you will give your whole attention, your whole being,everything of yourself, your eyes, your ears, your nerves; you will attend with completeself-abandonment, and then there is no room for fear, no room for contradiction, and thereforeno conflict. attention is not the same thing as concentration.concentration is exclusion; attention, which is total awareness, excludes nothing. it seemsto me that most of us are not aware, not only of what we are talking about but of our environment,the colours around us, the people, the shape of the trees, the clouds, the movement ofwater. perhaps it is because we are so concerned with ourselves, with our own petty littleproblems, our own ideas, our own pleasures,

pursuits and ambitions that we are not objectivelyaware. and yet we talk a great deal about awareness. once in india i was travellingin a car. there was a chauffeur driving and i was sitting beside him. there were threegentlemen behind discussing awareness very intently and asking me questions about awareness,and unfortunately at that moment the driver was looking somewhere else and he ran overa goat, and the three gentlemen were still discussing awareness—totally unaware thatthey had run over a goat. when this lack of attention was pointed out to those gentlemenwho were trying to be aware it was a great surprise to them. and with most of us it is the same. we arenot aware of outward things or of inward things.

if you want to understand the beauty of abird, a fly, or a leaf, or a person with all his complexities, you have to give your wholeattention which is awareness. and you can give your whole attention only when you care,which means that you really love to understand—then you give your whole heart and mind to findout. such awareness is like living with a snakein the room; you watch its every movement, you are very, very sensitive to the slightestsound it makes. such a state of attention is total energy; in such awareness the totalityof yourself is revealed in an instant. when you have looked at yourself so deeplyyou can go much deeper. when we use the word 'deeper' we are not being comparative. wethink in comparisons—deep and shallow, happy

and unhappy. we are always measuring, comparing.now is there such a state as the shallow and the deep in oneself? when i say, 'my mindis shallow, petty, narrow, limited', how do i know all these things? because i have comparedmy mind with your mind which is brighter, has more capacity, is more intelligent andalert. do i know my pettiness without comparison? when i am hungry, i do not compare that hungerwith yesterday's hunger. yesterday's hunger is an idea, a memory. if i am all the time measuring myself againstyou, struggling to be like you, then i am denying what i am myself. therefore i am creatingan illusion. when i have understood that comparison in any form leads only to greater illusionand greater misery, just as when i analyse

myself, add to my knowledge of myself bitby bit, or identify myself with something outside myself, whether it be the state, asaviour or an ideology—when i understand that all such processes lead only to greaterconformity and therefore greater conflict—when i see all this i put it completely away. thenmy mind is no longer seeking. it is very important to understand this. then my mind is no longergroping, searching, questioning. this does not mean that my mind is satisfied with thingsas they are, but such a mind has no illusion. such a mind can then move in a totally differentdimension. the dimension in which we usually live, the life of every day which is pain,pleasure and fear, has conditioned the mind, limited the nature of the mind, and when thatpain, pleasure and fear have gone (which does

not mean that you no longer have joy: joyis something entirely different from pleasure)—then the mind functions in a different dimensionin which there is no conflict, no sense of 'otherness'. verbally we can go only so far: what liesbeyond cannot be put into words because the word is not the thing. up to now we can describe,explain, but no words or explanations can open the door. what will open the door isdaily awareness and attention—awareness of how we speak, what we say, how we walk,what we think. it is like cleaning a room and keeping it in order. keeping the roomin order is important in one sense but totally unimportant in another. there must be orderin the room but order will not open the door

or the window. what will open the door isnot your volition or desire. you cannot possibly invite the other. all that you can do is tokeep the room in order, which is to be virtuous for itself, not for what it will bring. tobe sane, rational, orderly. then perhaps, if you are lucky, the window will open andthe breeze will come in. or it may not. it depends on the state of your mind. and thatstate of mind can be understood only by yourself, by watching it and never trying to shape it,never taking sides, never opposing, never agreeing, never justifying, never condemning,never judging—which means watching it without any choice. and out of this choiceless awarenessperhaps the door will open and you will know what that dimension is in which there is noconflict and no time.

iv pursuit of pleasure — desire — perversionby thought —memory — joy we said in the last chapter that joy was somethingentirely different from pleasure, so let us find out what is involved in pleasure andwhether it is at all possible to live in a world that does not contain pleasure but atremendous sense of joy, of bliss. we are all engaged in the pursuit of pleasurein some form or other—intellectual, sensuous or cultural pleasure, the pleasure of reforming,telling others what to do, of modifying the evils of society, of doing good—the pleasureof greater knowledge, greater physical satisfaction, greater experience, greater understandingof life, all the clever, cunning things of

the mind—and the ultimate pleasure is, ofcourse, to have god. pleasure is the structure of society. fromchildhood until death we are secretly, cunningly or obviously pursuing pleasure. so whateverour form of pleasure is, i think we should be very clear about it because it is goingto guide and shape our lives. it is therefore important for each one of us to investigateclosely, hesitantly and delicately this question of pleasure, for to find pleasure, and thennourish and sustain it, is a basic demand of life and without it existence becomes dull,stupid, lonely and meaningless. you may ask why then should life not be guidedby pleasure? for the very simple reason that pleasure must bring pain, frustration, sorrowand fear, and, out of fear, violence. if you

want to live that way, live that way. mostof the world does, anyway, but if you want to be free from sorrow you must understandthe whole structure of pleasure. to understand pleasure is not to deny it.we are not condemning it or saying it is right or wrong, but if we pursue it, let us do sowith our eyes open, knowing that a mind that is all the time seeking pleasure must inevitablyfind its shadow, pain. they cannot be separated, although we run after pleasure and try toavoid pain. now, why is the mind always demanding pleasure?why is it that we do noble and ignoble things with the undercurrent of pleasure? why isit we sacrifice and suffer on the thin thread of pleasure? what is pleasure and how doesit come into being? i wonder if any of you

have asked yourself these questions and followedthe answers to the very end? pleasure comes into being through four stages—perception,sensation, contact and desire. i see a beautiful motor car, say; then i get a sensation, areaction, from looking at it; then i touch it or imagine touching it, and then thereis the desire to own and show myself off in it. or i see a lovely cloud, or a mountainclear against the sky, or a leaf that has just come in springtime, or a deep valleyfull of loveliness and splendour, or a glorious sunset, or a beautiful face, intelligent,alive, not self-conscious and therefore no longer beautiful. i look at these things withintense delight and as i observe them there is no observer but only sheer beauty likelove. for a moment i am absent with all my

problems, anxieties and miseries—there isonly that marvellous thing. i can look at it with joy and the next moment forget it,or else the mind steps in, and then the problem begins; my mind thinks over what it has seenand thinks how beautiful it was; i tell myself i should like to see it again many times.thought begins to compare, judge, and say, 'i must have it again tomorrow'. the continuityof an experience that has given delight for a second is sustained by thought. it is the same with sexual desire or any otherform of desire. there is nothing wrong with desire. to react is perfectly normal. if youstick a pin in me i shall react unless i am paralysed. but then thought steps in and chewsover the delight and turns it into pleasure.

thought wants to repeat the experience, andthe more you repeat, the more mechanical it becomes; the more you think about it, themore strength thought gives to pleasure. so thought creates and sustains pleasure throughdesire, and gives it continuity, and therefore the natural reaction of desire to any beautifulthing is perverted by thought. thought turns it into a memory and memory is then nourishedby thinking about it over and over again. of course, memory has a place at a certainlevel. in everyday life we could not function at all without it. in its own field it mustbe efficient but there is a state of mind where it has very little place. a mind whichis not crippled by memory has real freedom. have you ever noticed that when you respondto something totally, with all your heart,

there is very little memory? it is only whenyou do not respond to a challenge with your whole being that there is a conflict, a struggle,and this brings confusion and pleasure or pain. and the struggle breeds memory. thatmemory is added to all the time by other memories and it is those memories which respond. anythingthat is the result of memory is old and therefore never free. there is no such thing as freedomof thought. it is sheer nonsense. thought is never new, for thought is the responseof memory, experience, knowledge. thought, because it is old, makes this thing whichyou have looked at with delight and felt tremendously for the moment, old. from the old you derivepleasure, never from the new. there is no time in the new.

so if you can look at all things without allowingpleasure to creep in—at a face, a bird, the colour of a sari, the beauty of a sheetof water shimmering in the sun, or anything that gives delight—if you can look at itwithout wanting the experience to be repeated, then there will be no pain, no fear, and thereforetremendous joy. it is the struggle to repeat and perpetuatepleasure which turns it into pain. watch it in yourself. the very demand for the repetitionof pleasure brings about pain, because it is not the same as it was yesterday. you struggleto achieve the same delight, not only to your aesthetic sense but the same inward qualityof the mind, and you are hurt and disappointed because it is denied to you.

have you observed what happens to you whenyou are denied a little pleasure? when you don't get what you want you become anxious,envious, hateful. have you noticed when you have been denied the pleasure of drinkingor smoking or sex or whatever it is—have you noticed what battles you go through? and all that is a form of fear, isn't it?you are afraid of not getting what you want or of losing what you have. when some particularfaith or ideology which you have held for years is shaken or torn away from you by logicor life, aren't you afraid of standing alone? that belief has for years given you satisfactionand pleasure, and when it is taken away you are left stranded, empty, and the fear remainsuntil you find another form of pleasure, another

belief. it seems to me so simple and because it isso simple we refuse to see its simplicity. we like to complicate everything. when yourwife turns away from you, aren't you jealous? aren't you angry? don't you hate the man whohas attracted her? and what is all that but fear of losing something which has given youa great deal of pleasure, a companionship, a certain quality of assurance and the satisfactionof possession? so if you understand that where there is asearch for pleasure there must be pain, live that way if you want to, but don't just slipinto it. if you want to end pleasure, though, which is to end pain, you must be totallyattentive to the whole structure of pleasure—not

cut it out as monks and sannyasis do, neverlooking at a woman because they think it is a sin and thereby destroying the vitalityof their understanding—but seeing the whole meaning and significance of pleasure. thenyou will have tremendous joy in life. you cannot think about joy. joy is an immediatething and by thinking about it, you turn it into pleasure. living in the present is theinstant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure fromit. v self-concern — craving for position — fearsand total fear — frag-mentation of thought — ending of fear

before we go any further i would like to askyou what is your fundamental, lasting interest in life? putting all oblique answers asideand dealing with this question directly and honestly, what would you answer? do you know? isn't it yourself? anyway, that is what mostof us would say if we answered truthfully. i am interested in my progress, my job, myfamily, the little corner in which i live, in getting a better position for myself, moreprestige, more power, more domination over others and so on. i think it would be logical,wouldn't it, to admit to ourselves that that is what most of us are primarily interestedin—'me' first? some of us would say that it is wrong to beprimarily interested in ourselves. but what

is wrong about it except that we seldom decently,honestly, admit it? if we do, we are rather ashamed of it. so there it is—one is fundamentallyinterested in oneself, and for various ideological or traditional reasons one thinks it is wrong.but what one thinks is irrelevant. why introduce the factor of its being wrong? that is anidea, a concept. what is a fact is that one is fundamentally and lastingly interestedin oneself. you may say that it is more satisfactory tohelp another than to think about yourself. what is the difference? it is still self-concern.if it gives you greater satisfaction to help others, you are concerned about what willgive you greater satisfaction. why bring any ideological concept into it? why this doublethinking? why not say, 'what i really want

is satisfaction, whether in sex, or in helpingothers, or in becoming a great saint, scientist or politician'? it is the same process, isn'tit? satisfaction in all sorts of ways, subtle and obvious, is what we want. when we saywe want freedom we want it because we think it may be wonderfully satisfying, and theultimate satisfaction, of course, is this peculiar idea of self-realization. what weare really seeking is a satisfaction in which there is no dissatisfaction at all. most of us crave the satisfaction of havinga position in society because we are afraid of being nobody. society is so constructedthat a citizen who has a position of respect is treated with great courtesy, whereas aman who has no position is kicked around.

everyone in the world wants a position, whetherin society, in the family or to sit on the right hand of god, and this position mustbe recognized by others, otherwise it is no position at all. we must always sit on theplatform. inwardly we are whirlpools of misery and mischief and therefore to be regardedoutwardly as a great figure is very gratifying. this craving for position, for prestige, forpower, to be recognized by society as being outstanding in some way, is a wish to dominateothers, and this wish to dominate is a form of aggression. the saint who seeks a positionin regard to his saintliness is as aggressive as the chicken pecking in the farmyard. andwhat is the cause of this aggressiveness? it is fear, isn't it?

fear is one of the greatest problems in life.a mind that is caught in fear lives in confusion, in conflict, and therefore must be violent,distorted and aggressive. it dare not move away from its own patterns of thinking, andthis breeds hypocrisy. until we are free from fear, climb the highest mountain, invent everykind of god, we will always remain in darkness. living in such a corrupt, stupid society aswe do, with the competitive education we receive which engenders fear, we are all burdenedwith fears of some kind, and fear is a dreadful thing which warps, twists and dulls our days. there is physical fear but that is a responsewe have inherited from the animals. it is psychological fears we are concerned withhere, for when we understand the deep-rooted

psychological fears we will be able to meetthe animal fears, whereas to be concerned with the animal fears first will never helpus to understand the psychological fears. we are all afraid about something; there isno fear in abstraction, it is always in relation to something. do you know your own fears—fearof losing your job, of not having enough food or money, or what your neighbours or the publicthink about you, or not being a success, of losing your position in society, of beingdespised or ridiculed—fear of pain and disease, of domination, of never knowing what loveis or of not being loved, of losing your wife or children, of death, of living in a worldthat is like death, of utter boredom, of not living up to the image others have built aboutyou, of losing your faith—all these and

innumerable other fears—do you know yourown particular fears? and what do you usually do about them? you run away from them, don'tyou, or invent ideas and images to cover them? but to run away from fear is only to increaseit. one of the major causes of fear is that wedo not want to face ourselves as we are. so, as well as the fears themselves, we have toexamine the network of escapes we have developed to rid ourselves of them. if the mind, inwhich is included the brain, tries to overcome fear, to suppress it, discipline it, controlit, translate it into terms of something else, there is friction, there is conflict, andthat conflict is a waste of energy. the first thing to ask ourselves then is whatis fear and how does it arise? what do we

mean by the word fear itself? i am askingmyself what is fear not what i am afraid of. i lead a certain kind of life; i think ina certain pattern; i have certain beliefs and dogmas and i don't want those patternsof existence to be disturbed because i have my roots in them. i don't want them to bedisturbed because the disturbance produces a state of unknowing and i dislike that. ifi am torn away from everything i know and believe, i want to be reasonably certain ofthe state of things to which i am going. so the brain cells have created a pattern andthose brain cells refuse to create another pattern which may be uncertain. the movementfrom certainty to uncertainty is what i call fear.

at the actual moment as i am sitting herei am not afraid; i am not afraid in the present, nothing is happening to me, nobody is threateningme or taking anything away from me. but beyond the actual moment there is a deeper layerin the mind which is consciously or unconsciously thinking of what might happen in the futureor worrying that something from the past may overtake me. so i am afraid of the past andof the future. i have divided time into the past and the future. thought steps in, says,'be careful it does not happen again', or 'be prepared for the future. the future maybe dangerous for you. you have got something now but you may lose it. you may die tomorrow,your wife may run away, you may lose your job. you may never become famous. you maybe lonely. you want to be quite sure of tomorrow.'

now take your own particular form of fear.look at it. watch your reactions to it. can you look at it without any movement of escape,justification, condemnation or suppression? can you look at that fear without the wordwhich causes the fear? can you look at death, for instance, without the word which arousesthe fear of death? the word itself brings a tremor, doesn't it, as the word love hasits own tremor, its own image? now is the image you have in your mind about death, thememory of so many deaths you have seen and the associating of yourself with those incidents—isit that image which is creating fear? or are you actually afraid of coming to an end, notof the image creating the end? is the word death causing you fear or the actual ending?if it is the word or the memory which is causing

you fear then it is not fear at all. you were ill two years ago, let us say, andthe memory of that pain, that illness, remains, and the memory now functioning says, 'be careful,don't get ill, again'. so the memory with its associations is creating fear, and thatis not fear at all because actually at the moment you have very good health. thought,which is always old, because thought is the response of memory and memories are alwaysold—thought creates, in time, the feeling that you are afraid which is not an actualfact. the actual fact is that you are well. but the experience, which has remained inthe mind as a memory, rouses the thought, 'be careful, don't fall ill again'.

so we see that thought engenders one kindof fear. but is there fear at all apart from that? is fear always the result of thoughtand, if it is, is there any other form of fear? we are afraid of death—that is, somethingthat is going to happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, in time. there is a distancebetween actuality and what will be. now thought has experienced this state; by observing deathit says, 'i am going to die.' thought creates the fear of death, and if it doesn't is thereany fear at all? is fear the result of thought? if it is, thoughtbeing always old, fear is always old. as we have said, there is no new thought. if werecognize it, it is already old. so what we are afraid of is the repetition of the old—thethought of what has been projecting into the

future. therefore thought is responsible forfear. this is so, you can see it for yourself. when you are confronted with something immediatelythere is no fear. it is only when thought comes in that there is fear. therefore our question now is, is it possiblefor the mind to live completely, totally, in the present? it is only such a mind thathas no fear. but to understand this, you have to understand the structure of thought, memoryand time. and in understanding it, understanding not intellectually, not verbally, but actuallywith your heart, your mind, your guts, you will be free from fear; then the mind canuse thought without creating fear. thought, like memory, is, of course, necessaryfor daily living. it is the only instrument

we have for communication, working at ourjobs and so forth. thought is the response to memory, memory which has been accumulatedthrough experience, knowledge, tradition, time. and from this background of memory wereact and this reaction is thinking. so thought is essential at certain levels but when thoughtprojects itself psychologically as the future and the past, creating fear as well as pleasure,the mind is made dull and therefore inaction is inevitable. so i ask myself, 'why, why, why, do i thinkabout the future and the past in terms of pleasure and pain, knowing that such thoughtcreates fear? isn't it possible for thought psychologically to stop, for otherwise fearwill never end?'

one of the functions of thought is to be occupiedall the time with something. most of us want to have our minds continually occupied sothat we are prevented from seeing ourselves as we actually are. we are afraid to be empty.we are afraid to look at our fears. consciously you can be aware of your fearsbut at the deeper levels of your mind are you aware of them? and how are you going tofind out the fears that are hidden, secret? is fear to be divided into the conscious andthe subconscious? this is a very important question. the specialist, the psychologist,the analyst, have divided fear into deep and superficial layers, but if you follow whatthe psychologist says or what i say, you are understanding our theories, our dogmas, ourknowledge, you are not understanding yourself.

you cannot understand yourself according tofreud or jung, or according to me. other people's theories have no importance whatever. it isof yourself that you must ask the question, is fear to be divided into the conscious andsubconscious? or is there only fear which you translate into different forms? thereis only one desire; there is only desire. you desire. the objects of desire change,but desire is always the same. so perhaps in the same way there is only fear. you areafraid of all sorts of things but there is only one fear. when you realize that fear cannot be dividedyou will see that you have put away altogether this problem of the subconscious and so havecheated the psychologists and the analysts.

when you understand that fear is a singlemovement which expresses itself in different ways and when you see the movement and notthe object to which the movement goes, then you are facing an immense question: how canyou look at it without the fragmentation which the mind has cultivated? there is only total fear, but how can themind which thinks in fragments observe this total picture? can it? we have lived a lifeof fragmentation, and can look at that total fear only through the fragmentary processof thought. the whole process of the machinery of thinking is to break up everything intofragments: i love you and i hate you; you are my enemy, you are my friend; my peculiaridiosyncrasies and inclinations, my job, my

position, my prestige, my wife, my child,my country and your country, my god and your god—all that is the fragmentation of thought.and this thought looks at the total state of fear, or tries to look at it, and reducesit to fragments. therefore we see that the mind can look at this total fear only whenthere is no movement of thought. can you watch fear without any conclusion,without any interference of the knowledge you have accumulated about it? if you cannot,then what you are watching is the past, not fear; if you can, then you are watching fearfor the first time without the interference of the past. you can watch only when the mind is very quiet,just as you can listen to what someone is

saying only when your mind is not chatteringwith itself, carrying on a dialogue with itself about its own problems and anxieties. canyou in the same way look at your fear without trying to resolve it, without bringing inits opposite, courage—actually look at it and not try to escape from it? when you say,'i must control it, i must get rid of it, i must understand it', you are trying to escapefrom it. you can observe a cloud or a tree or the movementof a river with a fairly quiet mind because they are not very important to you, but towatch yourself is far more difficult because there the demands are so practical, the reactionsso quick. so when you are directly in contact with fear or despair, loneliness or jealousy,or any other ugly state of mind, can you look

at it so completely that your mind is quietenough to see it? can the mind perceive fear and not the differentforms of fear—perceive total fear, not what you are afraid of? if you look merely at thedetails of fear or try to deal with your fears one by one, you will never come to the centralissue which is to learn to live with fear. to live with a living thing such as fear requiresa mind and heart that are extraordinarily subtle, that have no conclusion and can thereforefollow every movement of fear. then if you observe and live with it—and this doesn'ttake a whole day, it can take a minute or a second to know the whole nature of fear—ifyou live with it so completely you inevitably ask, 'who is the entity who is living withfear? who is it who is observing fear, watching

all the movements of the various forms offear as well as being aware of the central fact of fear? is the observer a dead entity,a static being, who has accumulated a lot of knowledge and information about himself,and is it that dead thing who is observing and living with the movement of fear? is theobserver the past or is he a living thing?' what is your answer? do not answer me, answeryourself. are you, the observer, a dead entity watching a living thing or are you a livingthing watching a living thing? because in the observer the two states exist. the observer is the censor who does not wantfear; the observer is the totality of all his experiences about fear. so the observeris separate from that thing he calls fear;

there is space between them; he is forevertrying to overcome it or escape from it and hence this constant battle between himselfand fear—this battle which is such a waste of energy. as you watch, you learn that the observeris merely a bundle of ideas and memories without any validity or substance, but that fear isan actuality and that you are trying to understand a fact with an abstraction which, of course,you cannot do. but, in fact, is the observer who says, 'i am afraid', any different fromthe thing observed which is fear? the observer is fear and when that is realized there isno longer any dissipation of energy in the effort to get rid of fear, and the time-spaceinterval between the observer and the observed

disappears. when you see that you are a partof fear, not separate from it—that you are fear—then you cannot do anything about it;then fear comes totally to an end. vi violence — anger — justification and condemnation— the ideal and the actual fear, pleasure, sorrow, thought and violenceare all interrelated. most of us take pleasure in violence, in disliking somebody, hatinga particular race or group of people, having antagonistic feelings towards others. butin a state of mind in which all violence has come to an end there is a joy which is verydifferent from the pleasure of violence with its conflicts, hatreds and fears.

can we go to the very root of violence andbe free from it? otherwise we shall live everlastingly in battle with each other. if that is theway you want to live—and apparently most people do—then carry on; if you say, 'well,i'm sorry, violence can never end', then you and i have no means of communication, youhave blocked yourself; but if you say there might be a different way of living, then weshall be able to communicate with each other. so let us consider together, those of us whocan communicate, whether it is at all possible totally to end every form of violence in ourselvesand still live in this monstrously brutal world. i think it is possible. i don't wantto have a breath of hate, jealousy, anxiety or fear in me. i want to live completely atpeace. which doesn't mean that i want to die.

i want to live on this marvellous earth, sofull, so rich, so beautiful. i want to look at the trees, flowers, rivers, meadows, women,boys and girls, and at the same time live completely at peace with myself and with theworld. what can i do? if we know how to look at violence, not onlyoutwardly in society—the wars, the riots, the national antagonisms and class conflicts—butalso in ourselves, then perhaps we shall be able to go beyond it. here is a very complex problem. for centuriesupon centuries man has been violent; religions have tried to tame him throughout the worldand none of them have succeeded. so if we are going into the question we must, it seemsto me, be at least very serious about it because

it will lead us into quite a different domain,but if we want merely to play with the problem for intellectual entertainment we shall notget very far. you may feel that you yourself are very seriousabout the problem but that as long as so many other people in the world are not seriousand are not prepared to do anything about it, what is the good of your doing anything?i don't care whether they take it seriously or not. i take it seriously, that is enough.i am not my brother's keeper. i myself, as a human being, feel very strongly about thisquestion of violence and i will see to it that in myself i am not violent—but i cannottell you or anybody else, 'don't be violent.' it has no meaning—unless you yourself wantit. so if you yourself really want to understand

this problem of violence let us continue onour journey of exploration together. is this problem of violence out there or here?do you want to solve the problem in the outside world or are you questioning violence itselfas it is in you? if you are free of violence in yourself the question arises, 'how am ito live in a world full of violence, acquisitiveness, greed, envy, brutality? will i not be destroyed?'that is the inevitable question which is invariably asked. when you ask such a question it seemsto me you are not actually living peacefully. if you live peacefully you will have no problemat all. you may be imprisoned because you refuse to join the army or shot because yourefuse to fight—but that is not a problem; you will be shot. it is extraordinarily importantto understand this.

we are trying to understand violence as afact, not as an idea, as a fact which exists in the human being, and the human being ismyself. and to go into the problem i must be completely vulnerable, open, to it. i mustexpose myself to myself—not necessarily expose myself to you because you may not beinterested—but i must be in a state of mind that demands to see this thing right to theend and at no point stops and says i will go no further. now it must be obvious to me that i am a violenthuman being. i have experienced violence in anger, violence in my sexual demands, violencein hatred, creating enmity, violence in jealousy and so on—i have experienced it, i haveknown it, and i say to myself, 'i want to

understand this whole problem not just onefragment of it expressed in war, but this aggression in man which also exists in theanimals and of which i am a part.' violence is not merely killing another. itis violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person,when we obey because there is fear. so violence isn't merely organized butchery in the nameof god, in the name of society or country. violence is much more subtle, much deeper,and we are enquiring into the very depths of violence. when you call yourself an indian or a muslimor a christian or a european, or anything else, you are being violent. do you see whyit is violent? because you are separating

yourself from the rest of mankind. when youseparate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. so a manwho is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion,to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understandingof mankind. now there are two primary schools of thoughtwith regard to violence, one which says, 'violence is innate in man' and the other which says,'violence is the result of the social and cultural heritage in which man lives.' weare not concerned with which school we belong to—it is of no importance. what is importantis the fact that we are violent, not the reason for it.

one of the most common expressions of violenceis anger. when my wife or sister is attacked i say i am righteously angry; when my countryis attacked, my ideas, my principles, my way of life, i am righteously angry. i am alsoangry when my habits are attacked or my petty little opinions. when you tread on my toesor insult me i get angry, or if you run away with my wife and i get jealous, that jealousyis called righteous because she is my property. and all this anger is morally justified. butto kill for my country is also justified. so when we are talking about anger, whichis a part of violence, do we look at anger in terms of righteous and unrighteous angeraccording to our own inclinations and environmental drive, or do we see only anger? is there righteousanger ever? or is there only anger? there

is no good influence or bad influence, onlyinfluence, but when you are influenced by something which doesn't suit me i call itan evil influence. the moment you protect your family, your country,a bit of coloured rag called a flag, a belief, an idea, a dogma, the thing that you demandor that you hold, that very protection indicates anger. so can you look at anger without anyexplanation or justification, without saying, 'i must protect my goods', or 'i was rightto be angry', or 'how stupid of me to be angry'? can you look at anger as if it were somethingby itself? can you look at it completely objectively, which means neither defending it nor condemningit? can you? can i look at you if i am antagonistic toyou or if i am thinking what a marvellous

person you are? i can see you only when ilook at you with a certain care in which neither of these things is involved. now, can i lookat anger in the same way, which means that i am vulnerable to the problem, i do not resistit, i am watching this extraordinary phenomenon without any reaction to it? it is very difficult to look at anger dispassionatelybecause it is a part of me, but that is what i am trying to do. here i am, a violent humanbeing, whether i am black, brown, white or purple. i am not concerned with whether ihave inherited this violence or whether society has produced it in me; all i am concernedwith is whether it is at all possible to be free from it. to be free from violence meanseverything to me. it is more important to

me than sex, food, position, for this thingis corrupting me. it is destroying me and destroying the world, and i want to understandit, i want to be beyond it. i feel responsible for all this anger and violence in the world.i feel responsible—it isn't just a lot of words—and i say to myself, 'i can do somethingonly if i am beyond anger myself, beyond violence, beyond nationality'. and this feeling i havethat i must understand the violence in myself brings tremendous vitality and passion tofind out. but to be beyond violence i cannot suppressit, i cannot deny it, i cannot say, 'well, it is a part of me and that's that', or 'idon't want it'. i have to look at it, i have to study it, i must become very intimate withit and i cannot become intimate with it if

i condemn it or justify it. we do condemnit, though; we do justify it. therefore i am saying, stop for the time being condemningit or justifying it. now, if you want to stop violence, if youwant to stop wars, how much vitality, how much of yourself, do you give to it? isn'tit important to you that your children are killed, that your sons go into the army wherethey are bullied and butchered? don't you care? my god, if that doesn't interest you,what does? guarding your money? having a good time? taking drugs? don't you see that thisviolence in yourself is destroying your children? or do you see it only as some abstraction? all right then, if you are interested, attendwith all your heart and mind to find out.

don't just sit back and say, 'well, tell usall about it'. i point out to you that you cannot look at anger nor at violence witheyes that condemn or justify and that if this violence is not a burning problem to you,you cannot put those two things away. so first you have to learn; you have to learn how tolook at anger, how to look at your husband, your wife, your children; you have to listento the politician, you have to learn why you are not objective, why you condemn or justify.you have to learn that you condemn and justify because it is part of the social structureyou live in, your conditioning as a german or an indian or a negro or an american orwhatever you happen to have been born, with all the dulling of the mind that this conditioningresults in. to learn, to discover, something

fundamental you must have the capacity togo deeply. if you have a blunt instrument, a dull instrument, you cannot go deeply. sowhat we are doing is sharpening the instrument, which is the mind—the mind which has beenmade dull by all this justifying and condemning. you can penetrate deeply only if your mindis as sharp as a needle and as strong as a diamond. it is no good just sitting back and asking,'how am i to get such a mind?' you have to want it as you want your next meal, and tohave it you must see that what makes your mind dull and stupid is this sense of invulnerabilitywhich has built walls round itself and which is part of this condemnation and justification.if the mind can be rid of that, then you can

look, study, penetrate, and perhaps come toa state that is totally aware of the whole problem. so let us come back to the central issue—isit possible to eradicate violence in ourselves? it is a form of violence to say, 'you haven'tchanged, why haven't you?' i am not doing that. it doesn't mean a thing to me to convinceyou of anything. it is your life, not my life. the way you live is your affair. i am askingwhether it is possible for a human being living psychologically in any society to clear violencefrom himself inwardly? if it is, the very process will produce a different way of livingin this world. most of us have accepted violence as a wayof life. two dreadful wars have taught us

nothing except to build more and more barriersbetween human beings—that is, between you and me. but for those of us who want to berid of violence, how is it to be done? i do not think anything is going to be achievedthrough analysis, either by ourselves or by a professional. we might be able to modifyourselves slightly, live a little more quietly with a little more affection, but in itselfit will not give total perception. but i must know how to analyse which means that in theprocess of analysis my mind becomes extraordinarily sharp, and it is that quality of sharpness,of attention, of seriousness, which will give total perception. one hasn't the eyes to seethe whole thing at a glance; this clarity of the eye is possible only if one can seethe details, then jump.

some of us, in order to rid ourselves of violence,have used a concept, an ideal, called non-violence, and we think by having an ideal of the oppositeto violence, non-violence, we can get rid of the fact, the actual—but we cannot. wehave had ideals without number, all the sacred books are full of them, yet we are still violent—sowhy not deal with violence itself and forget the word altogether? if you want to understand the actual you mustgive your whole attention, all your energy, to it. that attention and energy are distractedwhen you create a fictitious, ideal world. so can you completely banish the ideal? theman who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, what love is, hasno concept at all. he lives only in what is.

to investigate the fact of your own angeryou must pass no judgement on it, for the moment you conceive of its opposite you condemnit and therefore you cannot see it as it is. when you say you dislike or hate someone thatis a fact, although it sounds terrible. if you look at it, go into it completely, itceases, but if you say, 'i must not hate; i must have love in my heart', then you areliving in a hypocritical world with double standards. to live completely, fully, in themoment is to live with what is, the actual, without any sense of condemnation or justification—thenyou understand it so totally that you are finished with it. when you see clearly theproblem is solved. but can you see the face of violence clearly—theface of violence not only outside you but

inside you, which means that you are totallyfree from violence because you have not admitted ideology through which to get rid of it? thisrequires very deep meditation not just a verbal agreement or disagreement. you have now read a series of statements buthave you really understood? your conditioned mind, your way of life, the whole structureof the society in which you live, prevent you from looking at a fact and being entirelyfree from it immediately. you say, 'i will think about it; i will consider whether itis possible to be free from violence or not. i will try to be free.' that is one of themost dreadful statements you can make, 'i will try'. there is no trying, no doing yourbest. either you do it or you don't do it.

you are admitting time while the house isburning. the house is burning as a result of the violence throughout the world and inyourself and you say, 'let me think about it. which ideology is best to put out the fire?' when the house is on fire, do youargue about the colour of the hair of the man who brings the water? vii relationship — conflict — society — poverty— drugs — dependence — comparison — desire — ideals — hypocrisy the cessation of violence, which we have justbeen considering, does not necessarily mean a state of mind which is at peace with itselfand therefore at peace in all its relationships.

relationship between human beings is basedon the image-forming, defensive mechanism. in all our relationships each one of us buildsan image about the other and these two images have relationship, not the human beings themselves.the wife has an image about the husband—perhaps not consciously but nevertheless it is there—andthe husband has an image about the wife. one has an image about one's country and aboutoneself, and we are always strengthening these images by adding more and more to them. andit is these images which have relationship. the actual relationship between two humanbeings or between many human beings completely ends when there is the formation of images. relationship based on these images can obviouslynever bring about peace in the relationship

because the images are fictitious and onecannot live in an abstraction. and yet that is what we are all doing: living in ideas,in theories, in symbols, in images which we have created about ourselves and others andwhich are not realities at all. all our relationships, whether they be with property, ideas or people,are based essentially on this image-forming, and hence there is always conflict. how is it possible then to be completely atpeace within ourselves and in all our relationships with others? after all, life is a movementin relationship, otherwise there is no life at all, and if that life is based on an abstraction,an idea, or a speculative assumption, then such abstract living must inevitably bringabout a relationship which becomes a battlefield.

so is it at all possible for man to live acompletely orderly inward life without any form of compulsion, imitation, suppressionor sublimation? can he bring about such order within himself that it is a living qualitynot held within the framework of ideas—an inward tranquillity which knows no disturbanceat any moment—not in some fantastic mythical abstract world but in the daily life of thehome and the office? i think we should go into this question verycarefully because there is not one spot in our consciousness untouched by conflict. inall our relationships, whether with the most intimate person or with a neighbour or withsociety, this conflict exists—conflict being contradiction, a state of division, separation,a duality. observing ourselves and our relationships

to society we see that at all levels of ourbeing there is conflict—minor or major conflict which brings about very superficial responsesor devastating results. man has accepted conflict as an innate partof daily existence because he has accepted competition, jealousy, greed, acquisitivenessand aggression as a natural way of life. when we accept such a way of life we accept thestructure of society as it is and live within the pattern of respectability. and that iswhat most of us are caught in because most of us want to be terribly respectable. whenwe examine our own minds and hearts, the way we think, the way we feel and how we act inour daily lives, we observe that as long as we conform to the pattern of society, lifemust be a battlefield. if we do not accept

it—and no religious person can possiblyaccept such a society—then we will be completely free from the psychological structure of society. most of us are rich with the things of society.what society has created in us and what we have created in ourselves, are greed, envy,anger, hate, jealousy, anxiety—and with all these we are very rich. the various religionsthroughout the world have preached poverty. the monk assumes a robe, changes his name,shaves his head, enters a cell and takes a vow of poverty and chastity; in the east hehas one loincloth, one robe, one meal a day—and we all respect such poverty. but those menwho have assumed the robe of poverty are still inwardly, psychologically, rich with the thingsof society because they are still seeking

position and prestige; they belong to thisorder or that order, this religion or that religion; they still live in the divisionsof a culture, a tradition. that is not poverty. poverty is to be completely free of society,though one may have a few more clothes, a few more meals—good god, who cares? butunfortunately in most people there is this urge for exhibitionism. poverty becomes a marvellously beautiful thingwhen the mind is free of society. one must become poor inwardly for then there is noseeking, no asking, no desire, no—nothing! it is only this inward poverty that can seethe truth of a life in which there is no conflict at all. such a life is a benediction not tobe found in any church or any temple.

how is it possible then to free ourselvesfrom the psychological structure of society, which is to free ourselves from the essenceof conflict? it is not difficult to trim and lop off certain branches of conflict, butwe are asking ourselves whether it is possible to live in complete inward and therefore outwardtranquillity? which does not mean that we shall vegetate or stagnate. on the contrary,we shall become dynamic, vital, full of energy. to understand and to be free of any problemwe need a great deal of passionate and sustained energy, not only physical and intellectualenergy but an energy that is not dependent on any motive, any psychological stimulusor drug. if we are dependent on any stimulus that very stimulus makes the mind dull andinsensitive. by taking some form of drug we

may find enough energy temporarily to seethings very clearly but we revert to our former state and therefore become dependent on thatdrug more and more. so all stimulation, whether of the church or of alcohol or of drugs orof the written or spoken word, will inevitably bring about dependence, and that dependenceprevents us from seeing clearly for ourselves and therefore from having vital energy. we all unfortunately depend psychologicallyon something. why do we depend? why is there this urge to depend? we are taking this journeytogether; you are not waiting for me to tell you the causes of your dependence. if we enquiretogether we will both discover and therefore that discovery will be your own, and hence,being yours, it will give you vitality.

i discover for myself that i depend on something—anaudience, say, which will stimulate me. i derive from that audience, from addressinga large group of people, a kind of energy. and therefore i depend on that audience, onthose people, whether they agree or disagree. the more they disagree the more vitality theygive me. if they agree it becomes a very shallow, empty thing. so i discover that i need anaudience because it is a very stimulating thing to address people. now why? why do idepend? because in myself i am shallow, in myself i have nothing, in myself i have nosource which is always full and rich, vital, moving, living. so i depend. i have discoveredthe cause. but will the discovery of the cause free mefrom being dependent? the discovery of the

cause is merely intellectual, so obviouslyit does not free the mind from its dependency. the mere intellectual acceptance of an idea,or the emotional acquiescence in an ideology, cannot free the mind from being dependenton something which will give it stimulation. what frees the mind from dependence is seeingthe whole structure and nature of stimulation and dependence and how that dependence makesthe mind stupid, dull and inactive. seeing the totality of it alone frees the mind. so i must enquire into what it means to seetotally. as long as i am looking at life from a particular point of view or from a particularexperience i have cherished, or from some particular knowledge i have gathered, whichis my background, which is the 'me', i cannot

see totally. i have discovered intellectually,verbally, through analysis, the cause of my dependence, but whatever thought investigatesmust inevitably be fragmentary, so i can see the totality of something only when thoughtdoes not interfere. then i see the fact of my dependence; i seeactually what is. i see it without any like or dislike; i do not want to get rid of thatdependence or to be free from the cause of it. i observe it, and when there is observationof this kind i see the whole picture, not a fragment of the picture, and when the mindsees the whole picture there is freedom. now i have discovered that there is a dissipationof energy when there is fragmentation. i have found the very source of the dissipation ofenergy.

you may think there is no waste of energyif you imitate, if you accept authority, if you depend on the priest, the ritual, thedogma, the party or on some ideology, but the following and acceptance of an ideology,whether it is good or bad, whether it is holy or unholy, is a fragmentary activity and thereforea cause of conflict, and conflict will inevitably arise so long as there is a division between'what should be' and 'what is', and any conflict is a dissipation of energy. if you put the question to yourself, 'howam i to be free from conflict?', you are creating another problem and hence you are increasingconflict, whereas if you just see it as a fact—see it as you would see some concreteobject—clearly, directly—then you will

understand essentially the truth of a lifein which there is no conflict at all. let us put it another way. we are always comparingwhat we are with what we should be. the should-be is a projection of what we think we oughtto be. contradiction exists when there is comparison,not only with something or somebody, but with what you were yesterday, and hence there isconflict between what has been and what is. there is what is only when there is no comparisonat all, and to live with what is, is to be peaceful. then you can give your whole attentionwithout any distraction to what is within yourself—whether it be despair, ugliness,brutality, fear, anxiety, loneliness—and live with it completely; then there is nocontradiction and hence no conflict.

but all the time we are comparing ourselves—withthose who are richer or more brilliant, more intellectual, more affectionate, more famous,more this and more that. the 'more' plays an extraordinarily important part in our lives;this measuring ourselves all the time against something or someone is one of the primarycauses of conflict. now why is there any comparison at all? whydo you compare yourself with another? this comparison has been taught from childhood.in every school a is compared with b, and a destroys himself in order to be like b.when you do not compare at all, when there is no ideal, no opposite, no factor of duality,when you no longer struggle to be different from what you are—what has happened to yourmind? your mind has ceased to create the opposite

and has become highly intelligent, highlysensitive, capable of immense passion, because effort is a dissipation of passion—passionwhich is vital energy—and you cannot do anything without passion. if you do not compare yourself with anotheryou will be what you are. through comparison you hope to evolve, to grow, to become moreintelligent, more beautiful. but will you? the fact is what you are, and by comparingyou are fragmenting the fact which is a waste of energy. to see what you actually are withoutany comparison gives you tremendous energy to look. when you can look at yourself withoutcomparison you are beyond comparison, which does not mean that the mind is stagnant withcontentment. so we see in essence how the

mind wastes energy which is so necessary tounderstand the totality of life. i don't want to know with whom i am in conflict;i don't want to know the peripheral conflicts of my being. what i want to know is why conflictshould exist at all. when i put that question to myself i see a fundamental issue whichhas nothing to do with peripheral conflicts and their solutions. i am concerned with thecentral issue and i see—perhaps you see also?—that the very nature of desire, ifnot properly understood, must inevitably lead to conflict. desire is always in contradiction. i desirecontradictory things—which doesn't mean that i must destroy desire, suppress, controlor sublimate it—i simply see that desire

itself is contradictory. it is not the objectsof desire but the very nature of desire which is contradictory. and i have to understandthe nature of desire before i can understand conflict. in ourselves we are in a state ofcontradiction, and that state of contradiction is brought about by desire—desire beingthe pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain, which we have already been into. so we see desire as the root of all contradiction—wantingsomething and not wanting it—a dual activity. when we do something pleasurable there isno effort involved at all, is there? but pleasure brings pain and then there is a struggle toavoid the pain, and that again is a dissipation of energy. why do we have duality at all?there is, of course, duality in nature—man

and woman, light and shade, night and day—butinwardly, psychologically, why do we have duality? please think this out with me, don'twait for me to tell you. you have to exercise your own mind to find out. my words are merelya mirror in which to observe yourself. why do we have this psychological duality? isit that we have been brought up always to compare 'what is' with 'what should be'? wehave been conditioned in what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad,what is moral and what is immoral. has this duality come into being because we believethat thinking about the opposite of violence, the opposite of envy, of jealousy, of meanness,will help us to get rid of those things? do we use the opposite as a lever to get ridof what is? or is it an escape from the actual?

do you use the opposite as a means of avoidingthe actual which you don't know how to deal with? or is it because you have been toldby thousands of years of propaganda that you must have an ideal—the opposite of 'whatis'—in order to cope with the present? when you have an ideal you think it helps you toget rid of 'what is', but it never does. you may preach non-violence for the rest of yourlife and all the time be sowing the seeds you have a concept of what you should be andhow you should act, and all the time you are in fact acting quite differently; so you seethat principles, beliefs and ideals must inevitably lead to hypocrisy and a dishonest life. itis the ideal that creates the opposite to what is, so if you know how to be with 'whatis', then the opposite is not necessary.

trying to become like somebody else, or likeyour ideal, is one of the main causes of contradiction, confusion and conflict. a mind that is confused,whatever it does, at any level, will remain confused; any action born of confusion leadsto further confusion. i see this very clearly; i see it as clearly as i see an immediatephysical danger. so what happens? i cease to act in terms of confusion any more. thereforeinaction is complete action. viii freedom — revolt — solitude — innocence— living with ourselves as we are none of the agonies of suppression, nor thebrutal discipline of conforming to a pattern has led to truth. to come upon truth the mindmust be completely free, without a spot of

distortion. but first let us ask ourselves if we reallywant to be free? when we talk of freedom are we talking of complete freedom or of freedomfrom some inconvenient or unpleasant or undesirable thing? we would like to be free from painfuland ugly memories and unhappy experiences but keep our pleasurable, satisfying ideologies,formulas and relationships. but to keep the one without the other is impossible, for,as we have seen, pleasure is inseparable from pain. so it is for each one of us to decide whetheror not we want to be completely free. if we say we do, then we must understand the natureand structure of freedom.

is it freedom when you are free from something—freefrom pain, free from some kind of anxiety? or is freedom itself something entirely different?you can be free from jealousy, say, but isn't that freedom a reaction and therefore notfreedom at all? you can be free from dogma very easily, by analysing it, by kicking itout, but the motive for that freedom from dogma has its own reaction because the desireto be free from a dogma may be that it is no longer fashionable or convenient. or youcan be free from nationalism because you believe in internationalism or because you feel itis no longer economically necessary to cling to this silly nationalistic dogma with itsflag and all that rubbish. you can easily put that away. or you may react against somespiritual or political leader who has promised

you freedom as a result of discipline or revolt.but has such rationalism, such logical conclusion, anything to do with freedom? if you say you are free from something, itis a reaction which will then become another reaction which will bring about another conformity,another form of domination. in this way you can have a chain of reactions and accept eachreaction as freedom. but it is not freedom; it is merely a continuity of a modified pastwhich the mind clings to. the youth of today, like all youth, are inrevolt against society, and that is a good thing in itself, but revolt is not freedombecause when you revolt it is a reaction and that reaction sets up its own pattern andyou get caught in that pattern. you think

it is something new. it is not; it is theold in a different mould. any social or political revolt will inevitably revert to the goodold bourgeois mentality. freedom comes only when you see and act, neverthrough revolt. the seeing is the acting and such action is as instantaneous as when yousee danger. then there is no cerebration, no discussion or hesitation; the danger itselfcompels the act, and therefore to see is to act and to be free. freedom is a state of mind—not freedom fromsomething but a sense of freedom, a freedom to doubt and question everything and thereforeso intense, active and vigorous that it throws away every form of dependence, slavery, conformityand acceptance. such freedom implies being

completely alone. but can the mind broughtup in a culture so dependent on environment and its own tendencies ever find that freedomwhich is complete solitude and in which there is no leadership, no tradition and no authority? this solitude is an inward state of mind whichis not dependent on any stimulus or any knowledge and is not the result of any experience orconclusion. most of us, inwardly, are never alone. there is a difference between isolation,cutting oneself off, and aloneness, solitude. we all know what it is to be isolated—buildinga wall around oneself in order never to be hurt, never to be vulnerable, or cultivatingdetachment which is another form of agony, or living in some dreamy ivory tower of ideology.aloneness is something quite different.

you are never alone because you are full ofall the memories, all the conditioning, all the mutterings of yesterday; your mind isnever clear of all the rubbish it has accumulated. to be alone you must die to the past. whenyou are alone, totally alone, not belonging to any family, any nation, any culture, anyparticular continent, there is that sense of being an outsider. the man who is completelyalone in this way is innocent and it is this innocency that frees the mind from sorrow. we carry about with us the burden of whatthousands of people have said and the memories of all our misfortunes. to abandon all thattotally is to be alone, and the mind that is alone is not only innocent but young—notin time or age, but young, innocent, alive

at whatever age—and only such a mind cansee that which is truth and that which is not measurable by words. in this solitude you will begin to understandthe necessity of living with yourself as you are, not as you think you should be or asyou have been. see if you can look at yourself without any tremor, any false modesty, anyfear, any justification or condemnation—just live with yourself as you actually are. it is only when you live with something intimatelythat you begin to understand it. but the moment you get used to it—get used to your ownanxiety or envy or whatever it is—you are no longer living with it. if you live by ariver, after a few days you do not hear the

sound of the water any more, or if you havea picture in the room which you see every day you lose it after a week. it is the samewith the mountains, the valleys, the trees—the same with your family, your husband, yourwife. but to live with something like jealousy, envy or anxiety you must never get used toit, never accept it. you must care for it as you would care for a newly planted tree,protect it against the sun, against the storm. you must care for it, not condemn it or justifyit. therefore you begin to love it. when you care for it, you are beginning to love it.it is not that you love being envious or anxious, as so many people do, but rather that youcare for watching. so can you—can you and i—live with whatwe actually are, knowing ourselves to be dull,

envious, fearful, believing we have tremendousaffection when we have not, getting easily hurt, easily flattered and bored—can welive with all that, neither accepting it nor denying it, but just observing it withoutbecoming morbid, depressed or elated? now let us ask ourselves a further question.is this freedom, this solitude, this coming into contact with the whole structure of whatwe are in ourselves—is it to be come upon through time? that is, is freedom to be achievedthrough a gradual process? obviously not, because as soon as you introduce time youare enslaving yourself more and more. you cannot become free gradually. it is not amatter of time. the next question is, can you become consciousof that freedom? if you say, 'i am free',

then you are not free. it is like a man saying,'i am happy'. the moment he says, 'i am happy' he is living in a memory of something thathas gone. freedom can only come about naturally, not through wishing, wanting, longing. norwill you find it by creating an image of what you think it is. to come upon it the mindhas to learn to look at life, which is a vast movement, without the bondage of time, forfreedom lies beyond the field of consciousness. ix time — sorrow — death i am tempted to repeat a story about a greatdisciple going to god and demanding to be taught truth. this poor god says, 'my friend,it is such a hot day, please get me a glass

of water.' so the disciple goes out and knockson the door of the first house he comes to and a beautiful young lady opens the door.the disciple falls in love with her and they marry and have several children. then oneday it begins to rain, and keeps on raining, raining, raining—the torrents are swollen,the streets are full, the houses are being washed away. the disciple holds on to hiswife and carries his children on his shoulders and as he is being swept away he calls out,'lord, please save me', and the lord says, 'where is that glass of water i asked for?' it is rather a good story because most ofus think in terms of time. man lives by time. inventing the future has been his favouritegame of escape.

we think that changes in ourselves can comeabout in time, that order in ourselves can be built up little by little, added to dayby day. but time doesn't bring order or peace, so we must stop thinking in terms of gradualness.this means that there is no tomorrow for us to be peaceful in. we have to be orderly onthe instant. when there is real danger time disappears,doesn't it? there is immediate action. but we do not see the danger of many of our problemsand therefore we invent time as a means of overcoming them. time is a deceiver as itdoesn't do a thing to help us bring about a change in ourselves. time is a movementwhich man has divided into past, present and future, and as long as he divides it he willalways be in conflict.

is learning a matter of time? we have notlearnt after all these thousands of years that there is a better way to live than byhating and killing each other. the problem of time is a very important one to understandif we are to resolve this life which we have helped to make as monstrous and meaninglessas it is. the first thing to understand is that we canlook at time only with that freshness and innocency of mind which we have already beeninto. we are confused about our many problems and lost in that confusion. now if one islost in a wood, what is the first thing one does? one stops, doesn't one? one stops andlooks round. but the more we are confused and lost in life the more we chase around,searching, asking, demanding, begging. so

the first thing, if i may suggest it, is thatyou completely stop inwardly. and when you do stop inwardly, psychologically, your mindbecomes very peaceful, very clear. then you can really look at this question of time. problems exist only in time, that is whenwe meet an issue incompletely. this incomplete coming together with the issue creates theproblem. when we meet a challenge partially, fragmentarily, or try to escape from it—thatis, when we meet it without complete attention—we bring about a problem. and the problem continuesso long as we continue to give it incomplete attention, so long as we hope to solve itone of these days. do you know what time is? not by the watch,not chronological time, but psychological

time? it is the interval between idea andaction. an idea is for self-protection obviously; it is the idea of being secure. action isalways immediate; it is not of the past or of the future; to act must always be in thepresent, but action is so dangerous, so uncertain, that we conform to an idea which we hope willgive us a certain safety. do look at this in yourself. you have an ideaof what is right or wrong, or an ideological concept about yourself and society, and accordingto that idea you are going to act. therefore the action is in conformity with that idea,approximating to the idea, and hence there is always conflict. there is the idea, theinterval and action. and in that interval is the whole field of time. that intervalis essentially thought. when you think you

will be happy tomorrow, then you have an imageof yourself achieving a certain result in time. thought, through observation, throughdesire, and the continuity of that desire sustained by further thought, says, 'tomorrowi shall be happy. tomorrow i shall have success. tomorrow the world will be a beautiful place.'so thought creates that interval which is time. now we are asking, can we put a stop to time?can we live so completely that there is no tomorrow for thought to think about? becausetime is sorrow. that is, yesterday or a thousand yesterdays ago, you loved, or you had a companionwho has gone, and that memory remains and you are thinking about that pleasure and thatpain—you are looking back, wishing, hoping,

regretting, so thought, going over it againand again, breeds this thing we call sorrow and gives continuity to time. so long as there is this interval of timewhich has been bred by thought, there must be sorrow, there must be continuity of fear.so one asks oneself can this interval come to an end? if you say, 'will it ever end?',then it is already an idea, something you want to achieve, and therefore you have aninterval and you are caught again. now take the question of death which is animmense problem to most people. you know death, there it is walking every day by your side.is it possible to meet it so completely that you do not make a problem of it at all? inorder to meet it in such a way all belief,

all hope, all fear about it must come to anend, otherwise you are meeting this extraordinary thing with a conclusion, an image, with apremeditated anxiety, and therefore you are meeting it with time. time is the interval between the observerand the observed. that is, the observer, you, is afraid to meet this thing called death.you don't know what it means; you have all kinds of hopes and theories about it; youbelieve in reincarnation or resurrection, or in something called the soul, the atman,a spiritual entity which is timeless and which you call by different names. now have youfound out for yourself whether there is a soul? or is it an idea that has been handeddown to you? is there something permanent,

continuous, which is beyond thought? if thoughtcan think about it, it is within the field of thought and therefore it cannot be permanentbecause there is nothing permanent within the field of thought. to discover that nothingis permanent is of tremendous importance for only then is the mind free, then you can look,and in that there is great joy. you cannot be frightened of the unknown becauseyou do not know what the unknown is and so there is nothing to be frightened of. deathis a word, and it is the word, the image, that creates fear. so can you look at deathwithout the image of death? as long as the image exists from which springs thought, thoughtmust always create fear. then you either rationalize your fear of death and build a resistanceagainst the inevitable or you invent innumerable

beliefs to protect you from the fear of death.hence there is a gap between you and the thing of which you are afraid. in this time-spaceinterval there must be conflict which is fear, anxiety and self-pity. thought, which breedsthe fear of death, says, 'let's postpone it, let's avoid it, keep it as far away as possible,let's not think about it'—but you are thinking about it. when you say, 'i won't think aboutit', you have already thought out how to avoid it. you are frightened of death because youhave postponed it. we have separated living from dying, and theinterval between the living and the dying is fear. that interval, that time, is createdby fear. living is our daily torture, daily insult, sorrow and confusion, with occasionalopening of a window over enchanted seas. that

is what we call living, and we are afraidto die, which is to end this misery. we would rather cling to the known than face the unknown—theknown being our house, our furniture, our family, our character, our work, our knowledge,our fame, our loneliness, our gods—that little thing that moves around incessantlywithin itself with its own limited pattern of embittered existence. we think that living is always in the presentand that dying is something that awaits us at a distant time. but we have never questionedwhether this battle of everyday life is living at all. we want to know the truth about reincarnation,we want proof of the survival of the soul, we listen to the assertion of clairvoyantsand to the conclusions of psychical research,

but we never ask, never, how to live—tolive with delight, with enchantment, with beauty every day. we have accepted life asit is with all its agony and despair and have got used to it, and think of death as somethingto be carefully avoided. but death is extraordinarily like life when we know how to live. you cannotlive without dying. you cannot live if you do not die psychologically every minute. thisis not an intellectual paradox. to live completely, wholly, every day as if it were a new loveliness,there must be dying to everything of yesterday, otherwise you live mechanically, and a mechanicalmind can never know what love is or what freedom is. most of us are frightened of dying becausewe don't know what it means to live. we don't know how to live, therefore we don't knowhow to die. as long as we are frightened of

life we shall be frightened of death. theman who is not frightened of life is not frightened of being completely insecure for he understandsthat inwardly, psychologically, there is no security. when there is no security thereis an endless movement and then life and death are the same. the man who lives without conflict,who lives with beauty and love, is not frightened of death because to love is to die. if you die to everything you know, includingyour family, your memory, everything you have felt, then death is a purification, a rejuvenatingprocess; then death brings innocence and it is only the innocent who are passionate, notthe people who believe or who want to find out what happens after death.

to find out actually what takes place whenyou die you must die. this isn't a joke. you must die—not physically but psychologically,inwardly, die to the things you have cherished and to the things you are bitter about. ifyou have died to one of your pleasures, the smallest or the greatest, naturally, withoutany enforcement or argument, then you will know what it means to die. to die is to havea mind that is completely empty of itself, empty of its daily longings, pleasures andagonies. death is a renewal, a mutation, in which thought does not function at all becausethought is old. when there is death there is something totally new. freedom from theknown is death, and then you are living. x

love the demand to be safe in relationship inevitablybreeds sorrow and fear. this seeking for security is inviting insecurity. have you ever foundsecurity in any of your relationships? have you? most of us want the security of lovingand being loved, but is there love when each one of us is seeking his own security, hisown particular path? we are not loved because we don't know how to love. what is love? the word is so loaded and corruptedthat i hardly like to use it. everybody talks of love—every magazine and newspaper andevery missionary talks everlastingly of love. i love my country, i love my king, i lovesome book, i love that mountain, i love pleasure,

i love my wife, i love god. is love an idea?if it is, it can be cultivated, nourished, cherished, pushed around, twisted in any wayyou like. when you say you love god what does it mean? it means that you love a projectionof your own imagination, a projection of yourself clothed in certain forms of respectabilityaccording to what you think is noble and holy; so to say, 'i love god', is absolute nonsense.when you worship god you are worshipping yourself—and that is not love. because we cannot solve this human thing calledlove we run away into abstractions. love may be the ultimate solution to all man's difficulties,problems and travails, so how are we going to find out what love is? by merely definingit? the church has defined it one way, society

another, and there are all sorts of deviationsand perversions. adoring someone, sleeping with someone, the emotional exchange, thecompanionship—is that what we mean by love? that has been the norm, the pattern, and ithas become so tremendously personal, sensuous, and limited that religions have declared thatlove is something much more than this. in what they call human love they see there ispleasure, competition, jealousy, the desire to possess, to hold, to control and to interferewith another's thinking, and knowing the complexity of all this they say there must be anotherkind of love, divine, beautiful, untouched, uncorrupted. throughout the world, so-called holy men havemaintained that to look at a woman is something

totally wrong: they say you cannot come nearto god if you indulge in sex, therefore they push it aside although they are eaten up withit. but by denying sexuality they put out their eyes and cut out their tongues for theydeny the whole beauty of the earth. they have starved their hearts and minds; they are dehydratedhuman beings; they have banished beauty because beauty is associated with woman. can love be divided into the sacred and theprofane, the human and the divine, or is there only love? is love of the one and not of themany? if i say, 'i love you', does that exclude the love of the other? is love personal orimpersonal? moral or immoral? family or non-family? if you love mankind can you love the particular?is love sentiment? is love emotion? is love

pleasure and desire? all these questions indicate,don't they, that we have ideas about love, ideas about what it should or should not be,a pattern or a code developed by the culture in which we live. so to go into the question of what love iswe must first free it from the encrustation of centuries, put away all ideals and ideologiesof what it should or should not be. to divide anything into what should be and what is,is the most deceptive way of dealing with life. now how am i going to find out what this flameis which we call love—not how to express it to another but what it means in itself?i will first reject what the church, what

society, what my parents and friends, whatevery person and every book has said about it because i want to find out for myself whatit is. here is an enormous problem that involves the whole of mankind, there have been a thousandways of defining it and i myself am caught in some pattern or other according to whati like or enjoy at the moment—so shouldn't i, in order to understand it, first free myselffrom my own inclinations and prejudices? i am confused, torn by my own desires, so isay to myself, 'first clear up your own confusion. perhaps you may be able to discover what loveis through what it is not.' the government says, 'go and kill for thelove of your country'. is that love? religion says, 'give up sex for the love of god'. isthat love? is love desire? don't say no. for

most of us it is—desire with pleasure, thepleasure that is derived through the senses, through sexual attachment and fulfilment.i am not against sex, but see what is involved in it. what sex gives you momentarily is thetotal abandonment of yourself, then you are back again with your turmoil, so you wanta repetition over and over again of that state in which there is no worry, no problem, noself. you say you love your wife. in that love is involved sexual pleasure, the pleasureof having someone in the house to look after your children, to cook. you depend on her;she has given you her body, her emotions, her encouragement, a certain feeling of securityand well-being. then she turns away from you; she gets bored or goes off with someone else,and your whole emotional balance is destroyed,

and this disturbance, which you don't like,is called jealousy. there is pain in it, anxiety, hate and violence. so what you are reallysaying is, 'as long as you belong to me i love you but the moment you don't i beginto hate you. as long as i can rely on you to satisfy my demands, sexual and otherwise,i love you, but the moment you cease to supply what i want i don't like you.' so there isantagonism between you, there is separation, and when you feel separate from another thereis no love. but if you can live with your wife without thought creating all these contradictorystates, these endless quarrels in yourself, then perhaps—perhaps—you will know whatlove is. then you are completely free and so is she, whereas if you depend on her forall your pleasure you are a slave to her.

so when one loves there must be freedom, notonly from the other person but from oneself. this belonging to another, being psychologicallynourished by another, depending on another—in all this there must always be anxiety, fear,jealousy, guilt, and so long as there is fear there is no love; a mind ridden with sorrowwill never know what love is; sentimentality and emotionalism have nothing whatsoever todo with love. and so love is not to do with pleasure and desire. love is not the product of thought which isthe past. thought cannot possibly cultivate love. love is not hedged about and caughtin jealousy, for jealousy is of the past. love is always active present. it is not 'iwill love' or 'i have loved'. if you know

love you will not follow anybody. love doesnot obey. when you love there is neither respect nor disrespect. don't you know what it means really to lovesomebody—to love without hate, without jealousy, without anger, without wanting to interferewith what he is doing or thinking, without condemning, without comparing—don't youknow what it means? where there is love is there comparison? when you love someone withall your heart, with all your mind, with all your body, with your entire being, is therecomparison? when you totally abandon yourself to that love there is not the other. does love have responsibility and duty, andwill it use those words? when you do something

out of duty is there any love in it? in dutythere is no love. the structure of duty in which the human being is caught is destroyinghim. so long as you are compelled to do something because it is your duty you don't love whatyou are doing. when there is love there is no duty and no responsibility. most parents unfortunately think they areresponsible for their children and their sense of responsibility takes the form of tellingthem what they should do and what they should not do, what they should become and what theyshould not become. the parents want their children to have a secure position in society.what they call responsibility is part of that respectability they worship; and it seemsto me that where there is respectability there

is no order; they are concerned only withbecoming a perfect bourgeois. when they prepare their children to fit into society they areperpetuating war, conflict and brutality. do you call that care and love? really to care is to care as you would fora tree or a plant, watering it, studying its needs, the best soil for it, looking afterit with gentleness and tenderness—but when you prepare your children to fit into societyyou are preparing them to be killed. if you loved your children you would have no war. when you lose someone you love you shed tears—areyour tears for yourself or for the one who is dead? are you crying for yourself or foranother? have you ever cried for another?

have you ever cried for your son who was killedon the battlefield? you have cried, but do those tears come out of self-pity or haveyou cried because a human being has been killed? if you cry out of self-pity your tears haveno meaning because you are concerned about yourself. if you are crying because you arebereft of one in whom you have invested a great deal of affection, it was not reallyaffection. when you cry for your brother who dies cry for him. it is very easy to cry foryourself because he is gone. apparently you are crying because your heart is touched,but it is not touched for him, it is only touched by self-pity and self-pity makes youhard, encloses you, makes you dull and stupid. when you cry for yourself, is it love—cryingbecause you are lonely, because you have been

left, because you are no longer powerful—complainingof your lot, your environment—always you in tears? if you understand this, which meansto come in contact with it as directly as you would touch a tree or a pillar or a hand,then you will see that sorrow is self-created, sorrow is created by thought, sorrow is theoutcome of time. i had my brother three years ago, now he is dead, now i am lonely, aching,there is no one to whom i can look for comfort or companionship, and it brings tears to myeyes. you can see all this happening inside yourselfif you watch it. you can see it fully, completely, in one glance, not take analytical time overit. you can see in a moment the whole structure and nature of this shoddy little thing called'me', my tears, my family, my nation, my belief,

my religion—all that ugliness, it is allinside you. when you see it with your heart, not with your mind, when you see it from thevery bottom of your heart, then you have the key that will end sorrow. sorrow and love cannot go together, but inthe christian world they have idealized suffering, put it on a cross and worshipped it, implyingthat you can never escape from suffering except through that one particular door, and thisis the whole structure of an exploiting religious society. so when you ask what love is, you may be toofrightened to see the answer. it may mean complete upheaval; it may break up the family;you may discover that you do not love your

wife or husband or children—do you?—youmay have to shatter the house you have built, you may never go back to the temple. but if you still want to find out, you willsee that fear is not love, dependence is not love, jealousy is not love, possessivenessand domination are not love, responsibility and duty are not love, self-pity is not love,the agony of not being loved is not love, love is not the opposite of hate any morethan humility is the opposite of vanity. so if you can eliminate all these, not by forcingthem but by washing them away as the rain washes the dust of many days from a leaf,then perhaps you will come upon this strange flower which man always hungers after.

if you have not got love—not just in littledrops but in abundance—if you are not filled with it—the world will go to disaster. youknow intellectually that the unity of mankind is essential and that love is the only way,but who is going to teach you how to love? will any authority, any method, any system,tell you how to love? if anyone tells you, it is not love. can you say, 'i will practiselove. i will sit down day after day and think about it. i will practise being kind and gentleand force myself to pay attention to others'? do you mean to say that you can disciplineyourself to love, exercise the will to love? when you exercise discipline and will to love,love goes out of the window. by practising some method or system of loving you may becomeextraordinarily clever or more kindly or get

into a state of non-violence, but that hasnothing whatsoever to do with love. in this torn desert world there is no lovebecause pleasure and desire play the greatest roles, yet without love your daily life hasno meaning. and you cannot have love if there is no beauty. beauty is not something yousee—not a beautiful tree, a beautiful picture, a beautiful building or a beautiful woman.there is beauty only when your heart and mind know what love is. without love and that senseof beauty there is no virtue, and you know very well that, do what you will, improvesociety, feed the poor, you will only be creating more mischief, for without love there is onlyugliness and poverty in your own heart and mind. but when there is love and beauty, whateveryou do is right, whatever you do is in order.

if you know how to love, then you can do whatyou like because it will solve all other problems. so we reach the point: can the mind come uponlove without discipline, without thought, without enforcement, without any book, anyteacher or leader—come upon it as one comes upon a lovely sunset? it seems to me that one thing is absolutelynecessary and that is passion without motive—passion that is not the result of some commitmentor attachment, passion that is not lust. a man who does not know what passion is willnever know love because love can come into being only when there is total self-abandonment. a mind that is seeking is not a passionatemind and to come upon love without seeking

it is the only way to find it—to come uponit unknowingly and not as the result of any effort or experience. such a love, you willfind, is not of time; such a love is both personal and impersonal, is both the one andthe many. like a flower that has perfume you can smell it or pass it by. that flower isfor everybody and for the one who takes trouble to breathe it deeply and look at it with delight.whether one is very near in the garden, or very far away, it is the same to the flowerbecause it is full of that perfume and therefore it is sharing with everybody. love is something that is new, fresh, alive.it has no yesterday and no tomorrow. it is beyond the turmoil of thought. it is onlythe innocent mind which knows what love is,

and the innocent mind can live in the worldwhich is not innocent. to find this extraordinary thing which man has sought endlessly throughsacrifice, through worship, through relationship, through sex, through every form of pleasureand pain, is only possible when thought comes to understand itself and comes naturally toan end. then love has no opposite, then love has no conflict. you may ask, 'if i find such a love, whathappens to my wife, my children, my family? they must have security.' when you put sucha question you have never been outside the field of thought, the field of consciousness.when once you have been outside that field you will never ask such a question becausethen you will know what love is in which there

is no thought and therefore no time. you mayread this mesmerized and enchanted, but actually to go beyond thought and time—which meansgoing beyond sorrow—is to be aware that there is a different dimension called love. but you don't know how to come to this extraordinaryfount—so what do you do? if you don't know what to do, you do nothing, don't you? absolutelynothing. then inwardly you are completely silent. do you understand what that means?it means that you are not seeking, not wanting, not pursuing; there is no centre at all. thenthere is love. xi to look and to listen — art — beauty — austerity— images — problems — space

we have been enquiring into the nature oflove and have come to a point, i think, which needs much greater penetration, a much greaterawareness of the issue. we have discovered that for most people love means comfort, security,a guarantee for the rest of their lives of continuous emotional satisfaction. then someonelike me comes along and says, 'is that really love?' and questions you and asks you to lookinside yourself. and you try not to look because it is very disturbing—you would rather discussthe soul or the political or economic situation—but when you are driven into a corner to look,you realize that what you have always thought of as love is not love at all; it is a mutualgratification, a mutual exploitation. when i say, 'love has no tomorrow and no yesterday',or, 'when there is no centre then there is

love', it has reality for me but not for you.you may quote it and make it into a formula but that has no validity. you have to seeit for yourself, but to do so there must be freedom to look, freedom from all condemnation,all judgement, all agreeing or disagreeing. now, to look is one of the most difficultthings in life—or to listen—to look and listen are the same. if your eyes are blindedwith your worries, you cannot see the beauty of the sunset. most of us have lost touchwith nature. civilization is tending more and more towards large cities; we are becomingmore and more an urban people, living in crowded apartments and having very little space evento look at the sky of an evening and morning, and therefore we are losing touch with a greatdeal of beauty. i don't know if you have noticed

how few of us look at a sunrise or a sunsetor the moonlight or the reflection of light on water. having lost touch with nature we naturallytend to develop intellectual capacities. we read a great many books, go to a great manymuseums and concerts, watch television and have many other entertainments. we quote endlesslyfrom other people's ideas and think and talk a great deal about art. why is it that wedepend so much upon art? is it a form of escape, of stimulation? if you are directly in contactwith nature; if you watch the movement of a bird on the wing, see the beauty of everymovement of the sky, watch the shadows on the hills or the beauty on the face of another,do you think you will want to go to any museum

to look at any picture? perhaps it is becauseyou do not know how to look at all the things about you that you resort to some form ofdrug to stimulate you to see better. there is a story of a religious teacher whoused to talk every morning to his disciples. one morning he got on to the platform andwas just about to begin when a little bird came and sat on the window sill and beganto sing, and sang away with full heart. then it stopped and flew away and the teacher said,'the sermon for this morning is over'. it seems to me that one of our greatest difficultiesis to see for ourselves really clearly, not only outward things but inward life. whenwe say we see a tree or a flower or a person, do we actually see them? or do we merely seethe image that the word has created? that

is, when you look at a tree or at a cloudof an evening full of light and delight, do you actually see it, not only with your eyesand intellectually, but totally, completely? have you ever experimented with looking atan objective thing like a tree without any of the associations, any of the knowledgeyou have acquired about it, without any prejudice, any judgement, any words forming a screenbetween you and the tree and preventing you from seeing it as it actually is? try it andsee what actually takes place when you observe the tree with all your being, with the totalityof your energy. in that intensity you will find that there is no observer at all; thereis only attention. it is when there is inattention that there is the observer and the observed.when you are looking at something with complete

attention there is no space for a conception,a formula or a memory. this is important to understand because we are going into somethingwhich requires very careful investigation. it is only a mind that looks at a tree orthe stars or the sparkling waters of a river with complete self-abandonment that knowswhat beauty is, and when we are actually seeing we are in a state of love. we generally knowbeauty through comparison or through what man has put together, which means that weattribute beauty to some object. i see what i consider to be a beautiful building andthat beauty i appreciate because of my knowledge of architecture and by comparing it with otherbuildings i have seen. but now i am asking myself, 'is there a beauty without object?'when there is an observer who is the censor,

the experiencer, the thinker, there is nobeauty because beauty is something external, something the observer looks at and judges,but when there is no observer—and this demands a great deal of meditation, of enquiry—thenthere is beauty without the object. beauty lies in the total abandonment of theobserver and the observed and there can be self-abandonment only when there is totalausterity—not the austerity of the priest with its harshness, its sanctions, rules andobedience—not austerity in clothes, ideas, food and behaviour—but the austerity ofbeing totally simple which is complete humility. then there is no achieving, no ladder to climb;there is only the first step and the first step is the everlasting step.

say you are walking by yourself or with somebodyand you have stopped talking. you are surrounded by nature and there is no dog barking, nonoise of a car passing or even the flutter of a bird. you are completely silent and naturearound you is also wholly silent. in that state of silence both in the observer andthe observed—when the observer is not translating what he observes into thought—in that silencethere is a different quality of beauty. there is neither nature nor the observer. thereis a state of mind wholly, completely, alone; it is alone—not in isolation—alone instillness and that stillness is beauty. when you love, is there an observer? there is anobserver only when love is desire and pleasure. when desire and pleasure are not associatedwith love, then love is intense. it is, like

beauty, something totally new every day. asi have said, it has no yesterday and no tomorrow. it is only when we see without any preconception,any image, that we are able to be in direct contact with anything in life. all our relationshipsare really imaginary—that is, based on an image formed by thought. if i have an imageabout you and you have an image about me, naturally we don't see each other at all aswe actually are. what we see is the images we have formed about each other which preventus from being in contact, and that is why our relationships go wrong. when i say i know you, i mean i knew you yesterday.i do not know you actually now. all i know is my image of you. that image is put togetherby what you have said in praise of me or to

insult me, what you have done to me—it isput together by all the memories i have of you—and your image of me is put togetherin the same way, and it is those images which have relationship and which prevent us fromreally communing with each other. two people who have lived together for a longtime have an image of each other which prevents them from really being in relationship. ifwe understand relationship we can cooperate but cooperation cannot possibly exist throughimages, through symbols, through ideological conceptions. only when we understand the truerelationship between each other is there a possibility of love, and love is denied whenwe have images. therefore it is important to understand, not intellectually but actuallyin your daily life, how you have built images

about your wife, your husband, your neighbour,your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods—you have nothingbut images. these images create the space between youand what you observe and in that space there is conflict, so what we are going to findout now together is whether it is possible to be free of the space we create, not onlyoutside ourselves but in ourselves, the space which divides people in all their relationships. now the very attention you give to a problemis the energy that solves that problem. when you give your complete attention—i meanwith everything in you—there is no observer at all. there is only the state of attentionwhich is total energy, and that total energy

is the highest form of intelligence. naturallythat state of mind must be completely silent and that silence, that stillness, comes whenthere is total attention, not disciplined stillness. that total silence in which thereis neither the observer nor the thing observed is the highest form of a religious mind. butwhat takes place in that state cannot be put into words because what is said in words isnot the fact. to find out for yourself you have to go through it. every problem is related to every other problemso that if you can solve one problem completely—it does not matter what it is—you will seethat you are able to meet all other problems easily and resolve them. we are talking, ofcourse, of psychological problems. we have

already seen that a problem exists only intime, that is when we meet the issue incompletely. so not only must we be aware of the natureand structure of the problem and see it completely, but meet it as it arises and resolve it immediatelyso that it does not take root in the mind. if one allows a problem to endure for a monthor a day, or even for a few minutes, it distorts the mind. so is it possible to meet a problemimmediately without any distortion and be immediately, completely, free of it and notallow a memory, a scratch on the mind, to remain? these memories are the images we carryabout with us and it is these images which meet this extraordinary thing called lifeand therefore there is a contradiction and hence conflict. life is very real—life isnot an abstraction—and when you meet it

with images there are problems. is it possible to meet every issue withoutthis space-time interval, without the gap between oneself and the thing of which oneis afraid? it is possible only when the observer has no continuity, the observer who is thebuilder of the image, the observer who is a collection of memories and ideas, who isa bundle of abstractions. when you look at the stars there is you whoare looking at the stars in the sky; the sky is flooded with brilliant stars, there iscool air, and there is you, the observer, the experiencer, the thinker, you with youraching heart, you, the centre, creating space. you will never understand about the spacebetween yourself and the stars, yourself and

your wife or husband, or friend, because youhave never looked without the image, and that is why you do not know what beauty is or whatlove is. you talk about it, you write about it, but you have never known it except perhapsat rare intervals of total self-abandonment. so long as there is a centre creating spacearound itself there is neither love nor beauty. when there is no centre and no circumferencethen there is love. and when you love you are beauty. when you look at a face opposite, you arelooking from a centre and the centre creates the space between person and person, and thatis why our lives are so empty and callous. you cannot cultivate love or beauty, nor canyou invent truth, but if you are all the time

aware of what you are doing, you can cultivateawareness and out of that awareness you will begin to see the nature of pleasure, desireand sorrow and the utter loneliness and boredom of man, and then you will begin to come uponthat thing called 'the space'. when there is space between you and the objectyou are observing you will know there is no love, and without love, however hard you tryto reform the world or bring about a new social order or however much you talk about improvements,you will only create agony. so it is up to you. there is no leader, there is no teacher,there is nobody to tell you what to do. you are alone in this mad brutal world. xii

the observer and the observed please go on with me a little further. itmay be rather complex, rather subtle, but please go on with it. now, when i build an image about you or aboutanything, i am able to watch that image, so there is the image and the observer of theimage. i see someone, say, with a red shirt on and my immediate reaction is that i likeit or that i don't like it. the like or dislike is the result of my culture, my training,my associations, my inclinations, my acquired and inherited characteristics. it is fromthat centre that i observe and make my judgement, and thus the observer is separate from thething he observes.

but the observer is aware of more than oneimage; he creates thousands of images. but is the observer different from these images?isn't he just another image? he is always adding to and subtracting from what he is;he is a living thing all the time weighing, comparing, judging, modifying and changingas a result of pressures from outside and within—living in the field of consciousnesswhich is his own knowledge, influence and innumerable calculations. at the same timewhen you look at the observer, who is yourself, you see that he is made up of memories, experiences,accidents, influences, traditions and infinite varieties of suffering, all of which are thepast. so the observer is both the past and the present, and tomorrow is waiting and thatis also a part of him. he is half alive and

half dead and with this death and life heis looking, with the dead and living leaf. and in that state of mind, which is withinthe field of time, you (the observer) look at fear, at jealousy, at war, at the family(that ugly enclosed entity called the family) and try to solve the problem of the thingobserved which is the challenge, the new; you are always translating the new in termsof the old and therefore you are everlastingly in conflict. one image, as the observer, observes dozensof other images around himself and inside himself, and he says, 'i like this image,i'm going to keep it' or 'i don't like that image so i'll get rid of it', but the observerhimself has been put together by the various

images which have come into being throughreaction to various other images. so we come to a point where we can say, 'the observeris also the image, only he has separated himself and observes. this observer who has come intobeing through various other images thinks himself permanent and between himself andthe images he has created there is a division, a time interval. this creates conflict betweenhimself and the images he believes to be the cause of his troubles. so then he says, "imust get rid of this conflict", but the very desire to get rid of the conflict createsanother image.' awareness of all this, which is real meditation,has revealed that there is a central image put together by all the other images, andthis central image, the observer, is the censor,

the experiencer, the evaluator, the judgewho wants to conquer or subjugate the other images or destroy them altogether. the otherimages are the result of judgements, opinions and conclusions by the observer, and the observeris the result of all the other images—therefore the observer is the observed. so awareness has revealed the different statesof one's mind, has revealed the various images and the contradiction between the images,has revealed the resulting conflict and the despair at not being able to do anything aboutit and the various attempts to escape from it. all this has been revealed through cautioushesitant awareness, and then comes the awareness that the observer is the observed. it is nota superior entity who becomes aware of this,

it is not a higher self (the superior entity,the higher self, are merely inventions, further images); it is the awareness itself whichhas revealed that the observer is the observed. if you ask yourself a question, who is theentity who is going to receive the answer? and who is the entity who is going to enquire?if the entity is part of consciousness, part of thought, then it is incapable of findingout. what it can find out is only a state of awareness. but if in that state of awarenessthere is still an entity who says, 'i must be aware, i must practise awareness', thatagain is another image. this awareness that the observer is the observedis not a process of identification with the observed. to identify ourselves with somethingis fairly easy. most of us identify ourselves

with something—with our family, our husbandor wife, our nation—and that leads to great misery and great wars. we are consideringsomething entirely different and we must understand it not verbally but in our core, right atthe root of our being. in ancient china before an artist began to paint anything—a tree,for instance—he would sit down in front of it for days, months, years, it didn't matterhow long, until he was the tree. he did not identify himself with the tree but he wasthe tree. this means that there was no space between him and the tree, no space betweenthe observer and the observed, no experiencer experiencing the beauty, the movement, theshadow, the depth of a leaf, the quality of colour. he was totally the tree, and in thatstate only could he paint.

any movement on the part of the observer,if he has not realized that the observer is the observed, creates only another seriesof images and again he is caught in them. but what takes place when the observer isaware that the observer is the observed? go slowly, go very slowly, because it is a verycomplex thing we are going into now. what takes place? the observer does not act atall. the observer has always said, 'i must do something about these images, i must suppressthem or give them a different shape'; he is always active in regard to the observed, actingand reacting passionately or casually, and this action of like and dislike on the partof the observer is called positive action—'i like, therefore i must hold. i dislike thereforei must get rid of.' but when the observer

realizes that the thing about which he isacting is himself, then there is no conflict between himself and the image. he is that.he is not separate from that. when he was separate, he did, or tried to do, somethingabout it, but when the observer realizes that he is that, then there is no like or dislikeand conflict ceases. for what is he to do? if something is you,what can you do? you cannot rebel against it or run away from it or even accept it.it is there. so all action that is the outcome of reaction to like and dislike has come toan end. then you will find that there is an awarenessthat has become tremendously alive. it is not bound to any central issue or to any image—andfrom that intensity of awareness there is

a different quality of attention and thereforethe mind—because the mind is this awareness—has become extraordinarily sensitive and highlyintelligent. xiii what is thinking? — ideas and action — challenge— matter — the beginning of thought let us now go into the question of what isthinking, the significance of that thought which must be exercised with care, logic andsanity (for our daily work) and that which has no significance at all. unless we knowthe two kinds, we cannot possibly understand something much deeper which thought cannottouch. so let us try to understand this whole complex structure of what is thinking, whatis memory, how thought originates, how thought

conditions all our actions; and in understandingall this we shall perhaps come across something which thought has never discovered, whichthought cannot open the door to. why has thought become so important in allour lives—thought being ideas, being the response to the accumulated memories in thebrain cells? perhaps many of you have not even asked such a question before, or if youhave you may have said, 'it's of very little importance—what is important is emotion.'but i don't see how you can separate the two. if thought doesn't give continuity to feeling,feeling dies very quickly. so why in our daily lives, in our grinding, boring, frightenedlives, has thought taken on such inordinate importance? ask yourself as i am asking myself—whyis one a slave to thought—cunning, clever,

thought which can organize, which can startthings, which has invented so much, bred so many wars, created so much fear, so much anxiety,which is forever making images and chasing its own tail—thought which has enjoyed thepleasure of yesterday and given that pleasure continuity in the present and also in thefuture—thought which is always active, chattering, moving, constructing, taking away, adding,supposing? ideas have become far more important to usthan action—ideas so cleverly expressed in books by the intellectuals in every field.the more cunning, the more subtle, those ideas are the more we worship them and the booksthat contain them. we are those books, we are those ideas, so heavily conditioned arewe by them. we are forever discussing ideas

and ideals and dialectically offering opinions.every religion has its dogma, its formula, its own scaffold to reach the gods, and whenenquiring into the beginning of thought we are questioning the importance of this wholeedifice of ideas. we have separated ideas from action because ideas are always of thepast and action is always the present—that is, living is always the present. we are afraidof living and therefore the past, as ideas, has become so important to us. it is really extraordinarily interesting towatch the operation of one's own thinking, just to observe how one thinks, where thatreaction we call thinking, springs from. obviously from memory. is there a beginning to thoughtat all? if there is, can we find out its beginning—that

is, the beginning of memory, because if wehad no memory we would have no thought? we have seen how thought sustains and givescontinuity to a pleasure that we had yesterday and how thought also sustains the reverseof pleasure which is fear and pain, so the experiencer, who is the thinker, is the pleasureand the pain and also the entity who gives nourishment to the pleasure and pain. thethinker separates pleasure from pain. he doesn't see that in the very demand for pleasure heis inviting pain and fear. thought in human relationships is always demanding pleasurewhich it covers by different words like loyalty, helping, giving, sustaining, serving. i wonderwhy we want to serve? the petrol station offers good service. what do those words mean, tohelp, to give, to serve? what is it all about?

does a flower full of beauty, light and lovelinesssay, 'i am giving, helping, serving'? it is! and because it is not trying to do anythingit covers the earth. thought is so cunning, so clever, that itdistorts everything for its own convenience. thought in its demand for pleasure bringsits own bondage. thought is the breeder of duality in all our relationships: there isviolence in us which gives us pleasure but there is also the desire for peace, the desireto be kind and gentle. this is what is going on all the time in all our lives. thoughtnot only breeds this duality in us, this contradiction, but it also accumulates the innumerable memorieswe have had of pleasure and pain, and from these memories it is reborn. so thought isthe past, thought is always old, as i have

already said. as every challenge is met in terms of thepast—a challenge being always new—our meeting of the challenge will always be totallyinadequate, hence contradiction, conflict and all the misery and sorrow we are heirto. our little brain is in conflict whatever it does. whether it aspires, imitates, conforms,suppresses, sublimates, takes drugs to expand itself—whatever it does—it is in a stateof conflict and will produce conflict. those who think a great deal are very materialisticbecause thought is matter. thought is matter as much as the floor, the wall, the telephone,are matter. energy functioning in a pattern becomes matter. there is energy and thereis matter. that is all life is. we may think

thought is not matter but it is. thought ismatter as an ideology. where there is energy it becomes matter. matter and energy are interrelated.the one cannot exist without the other, and the more harmony there is between the two,the more balance, the more active the brain cells are. thought has set up this patternof pleasure, pain, fear, and has been functioning inside it for thousands of years and cannotbreak the pattern because it has created it. a new fact cannot be seen by thought. it canbe understood later by thought, verbally, but the understanding of a new fact is notreality to thought. thought can never solve any psychological problem. however clever,however cunning, however erudite, whatever the structure thought creates through science,through an electronic brain, through compulsion

or necessity, thought is never new and thereforeit can never answer any tremendous question. the old brain cannot solve the enormous problemof living. thought is crooked because it can invent anythingand see things that are not there. it can perform the most extraordinary tricks, andtherefore it cannot be depended upon. but if you understand the whole structure of howyou think, why you think, the words you use, the way you behave in your daily life, theway you talk to people, the way you treat people, the way you walk, the way you eat—ifyou are aware of all these things then your mind will not deceive you, then there is nothingto be deceived. the mind then is not something that demands, that subjugates; it becomesextraordinarily quiet, pliable, sensitive,

alone, and in that state there is no deceptionwhatsoever. have you ever noticed that when you are ina state of complete attention the observer, the thinker, the centre, the 'me', comes toan end? in that state of attention thought begins to wither away. if one wants to see a thing very clearly,one's mind must be very quiet, without all the prejudices, the chattering, the dialogue,the images, the pictures—all that must be put aside to look. and it is only in silencethat you can observe the beginning of thought—not when you are searching, asking questions,waiting for a reply. so it is only when you are completely quiet, right through your being,having put that question, 'what is the beginning

of thought?', that you will begin to see,out of that silence, how thought takes shape. if there is an awareness of how thought beginsthen there is no need to control thought. we spend a great deal of time and waste agreat deal of energy all through our lives, not only at school, trying to control ourthoughts—'this is a good thought, i must think about it a lot. this is an ugly thought,i must suppress it.' there is a battle going on all the time between one thought and another,one desire and another, one pleasure dominating all other pleasures. but if there is an awarenessof the beginning of thought, then there is no contradiction in thought. now when you hear a statement like 'thoughtis always old' or 'time is sorrow', thought

begins to translate it and interpret it. butthe translation and interpretation are based on yesterday's knowledge and experience, soyou will invariably translate according to your conditioning. but if you look at thosestatements and do not interpret them all but just give them your complete attention (notconcentration) you will find there is neither the observer nor the observed, neither thethinker nor the thought. don't say, 'which began first?' that is a clever argument whichleads nowhere. you can observe in yourself that as long as there is no thought—whichdoesn't mean a state of amnesia, of blankness—as long as there is no thought derived from memory,experience or knowledge, which are all of the past, there is no thinker at all. thisis not a philosophical or mystical affair.

we are dealing with actual facts, and youwill see, if you have gone this far in the journey, that you will respond to a challenge,not with the old brain, but totally anew. xiv the burdens of yesterday — the quiet mind— communication — achievement — discipline — silence — truth and reality in the life we generally lead there is verylittle solitude. even when we are alone our lives are crowded by so many influences, somuch knowledge, so many memories of so many experiences, so much anxiety, misery and conflictthat our minds become duller and duller, more and more insensitive, functioning in a monotonousroutine. are we ever alone? or are we carrying

with us all the burdens of yesterday? there is a rather nice story of two monkswalking from one village to another and they come upon a young girl sitting on the bankof a river, crying. and one of the monks goes up to her and says, 'sister, what are youcrying about?' she says, 'you see that house over there across the river? i came over thismorning early and had no trouble wading across but now the river has swollen and i can'tget back. there is no boat.' 'oh,' says the monk, 'that is no problem at all', and hepicks her up and carries her across the river and leaves her on the other side. and thetwo monks go on together. after a couple of hours, the other monk says, 'brother, we havetaken a vow never to touch a woman. what you

have done is a terrible sin. didn't you havepleasure, a great sensation, in touching a woman?' and the other monk replies, 'i lefther behind two hours ago. you are still carrying her, aren't you?' that is what we do. we carry our burdens allthe time; we never die to them, we never leave them behind. it is only when we give completeattention to a problem and solve it immediately—never carrying it over to the next day, the nextminute—that there is solitude. then, even, if we live in a crowded house or are in abus, we have solitude. and that solitude indicates a fresh mind, an innocent mind. to have inward solitude and space is veryimportant because it implies freedom to be,

to go, to function, to fly. after all, goodnesscan only flower in space just as virtue can flower only when there is freedom. we mayhave political freedom but inwardly we are not free and therefore there is no space.no virtue, no quality that is worthwhile, can function or grow without this vast spacewithin oneself. and space and silence are necessary because it is only when the mindis alone, uninfluenced, untrained, not held by infinite varieties of experience, thatit can come upon something totally new. one can see directly that it is only whenthe mind is silent that there is a possibility of clarity. the whole purpose of meditationin the east is to bring about such a state of mind—that is, to control thought, whichis the same as constantly repeating a prayer

to quieten the mind and in that state hopingto understand one's problems. but unless one lays the foundation, which is to be free fromfear, free from sorrow, anxiety and all the traps one lays for oneself, i do not see howit is possible for a mind to be actually quiet. this is one of the most difficult things tocommunicate. communication between us implies, doesn't it, that not only must you understandthe words i am using but that we must both, you and i, be intense at the same time, nota moment later or a moment sooner and capable of meeting each other on the same level? andsuch communication is not possible when you are interpreting what you are reading accordingto your own knowledge, pleasure or opinions, or when you are making a tremendous effortto comprehend.

it seems to me that one of the greatest stumblingblocks in life is this constant struggle to reach, to achieve, to acquire. we are trainedfrom childhood to acquire and to achieve—the very brain cells themselves create and demandthis pattern of achievement in order to have physical security, but psychological securityis not within the field of achievement. we demand security in all our relationships,attitudes and activities but, as we have seen, there is actually no such thing as security.to find out for yourself that there is no form of security in any relationship—torealize that psychologically there is nothing permanent—gives a totally different approachto life. it is essential, of course, to have outward security—shelter, clothing, food—butthat outward security is destroyed by the

demand for psychological security. space and silence are necessary to go beyondthe limitations of consciousness, but how can a mind which is so endlessly active inits self-interest be quiet? one can discipline it, control it, shape it, but such torturedoes not make the mind quiet; it merely makes it dull. obviously the mere pursuit of theideal of having a quiet mind is valueless because the more you force it the more narrowand stagnant it becomes. control in any form, like suppression, produces only conflict.so control and outward discipline are not the way, nor has an undisciplined life anyvalue. most of our lives are outwardly disciplinedby the demands of society, by the family,

by our own suffering, by our own experience,by conforming to certain ideological or factual patterns—and that form of discipline isthe most deadening thing. discipline must be without control, without suppression, withoutany form of fear. how is this discipline to come about? it is not discipline first andthen freedom; freedom is at the very beginning, not at the end. to understand this freedom,which is the freedom from the conformity of discipline, is discipline itself. the veryact of learning is discipline (after all the root meaning of the word discipline is tolearn), the very act of learning becomes clarity. to understand the whole nature and structureof control, suppression and indulgence demands attention. you don't have to impose disciplinein order to study it, but the very act of

studying brings about its own discipline inwhich there is no suppression. in order to deny authority (we are talkingof psychological authority, not the law)—to deny the authority of all religious organizations,traditions and experience, one has to see why one normally obeys—actually study it.and to study it there must be freedom from condemnation, justification, opinion or acceptance.now we cannot accept authority and yet study it—that is impossible. to study the wholepsychological structure of authority within ourselves there must be freedom. and whenwe are studying we are denying the whole structure, and when we do deny, that very denial is thelight of the mind that is free from authority. negation of everything that has been consideredworthwhile, such as outward discipline, leadership,

idealism, is to study it; then that very actof studying is not only discipline but the negative of it, and the very denial is a positiveact. so we are negating all those things that are considered important to bring about thequietness of the mind. thus we see it is not control that leads toquietness. nor is the mind quiet when it has an object which is so absorbing that it getslost in that object. this is like giving a child an interesting toy; he becomes veryquiet, but remove the toy and he returns to his mischief-making. we all have our toyswhich absorb us and we think we are very quiet but if a man is dedicated to a certain formof activity, scientific, literary or whatever it is, the toy merely absorbs him and he isnot really quiet at all.

the only silence we know is the silence whennoise stops, the silence when thought stops—but that is not silence. silence is somethingentirely different, like beauty, like love. and this silence is not the product of a quietmind, it is not the product of the brain cells which have understood the whole structureand say, 'for god's sake be quiet'; then the brain cells themselves produce the silenceand that is not silence. nor is silence the outcome of attention in which the observeris the observed; then there is no friction, but that is not silence. you are waiting for me to describe what thissilence is so that you can compare it, interpret it, carry it away and bury it. it cannot bedescribed. what can be described is the known,

and the freedom from the known can come intobeing only when there is a dying every day to the known, to the hurts, the flatteries,to all the images you have made, to all your experiences—dying every day so that thebrain cells themselves become fresh, young, innocent. but that innocency, that freshness,that quality of tenderness and gentleness, does not produce love; it is not the qualityof beauty or silence. that silence which is not the silence of theending of noise is only a small beginning. it is like going through a small hole to anenormous, wide, expansive ocean, to an immeasurable, timeless state. but this you cannot understandverbally unless you have understood the whole structure of consciousness and the meaningof pleasure, sorrow and despair, and the brain

cells themselves have become quiet. then perhapsyou may come upon that mystery which nobody can reveal to you and nothing can destroy.a living mind is a still mind, a living mind is a mind that has no centre and thereforeno space and time. such a mind is limitless and that is the only truth, that is the onlyreality. xv experience — satisfaction — duality — meditation we all want experiences of some kind—themystical experience, the religious experience, the sexual experience, the experience of havinga great deal of money, power, position, domination. as we grow older we may have finished withthe demands of our physical appetites but

then we demand wider, deeper and more significantexperiences, and we try various means to obtain them—expanding our consciousness, for instance,which is quite an art, or taking various kinds of drugs. this is an old trick which has existedfrom time immemorial—chewing a piece of leaf or experimenting with the latest chemicalto bring about a temporary alteration in the structure of the brain cells, a greater sensitivityand heightened perception which give a semblance of reality. this demand for more and moreexperiences shows the inward poverty of man. we think that through experiences we can escapefrom ourselves but these experiences are conditioned by what we are. if the mind is petty, jealous,anxious, it may take the very latest form of drug but it will still see only its ownlittle creation, its own little projections

from its own conditioned background. most of us demand completely satisfying, lastingexperiences which cannot be destroyed by thought. so behind this demand for experience is thedesire for satisfaction, and the demand for satisfaction dictates the experience, andtherefore we have not only to understand this whole business of satisfaction but also thething that is experienced. to have some great satisfaction is a great pleasure; the morelasting, deep and wide the experience the more pleasurable it is, so pleasure dictatesthe form of experience we demand, and pleasure is the measure by which we measure the experience.anything measurable is within the limits of thought and is apt to create illusion. youcan have marvellous experiences and yet be

completely deluded. you will inevitably seevisions according to your conditioning; you will see christ or buddha or whoever you happento believe in, and the greater a believer you are the stronger will be your visions,the projections of your own demands and urges. so if in seeking something fundamental, suchas what is truth, pleasure is the measure, you have already projected what that experiencewill be and therefore it is no longer valid. what do we mean by experience? is there anythingnew or original in experience? experience is a bundle of memories responding to a challengeand it can respond only according to its background, and the cleverer you are at interpreting theexperience the more it responds. so you have to question not only the experience of anotherbut your own experience. if you don't recognize

an experience it isn't an experience at all.every experience has already been experienced or you wouldn't recognize it. you recognizean experience as being good, bad, beautiful, holy and so on according to your conditioning,and therefore the recognition of an experience must inevitably be old. when we demand an experience of reality—aswe all do, don't we?—to experience it we must know it and the moment we recognize itwe have already projected it and therefore it is not real because it is still withinthe field of thought and time. if thought can think about reality it cannot be reality.we cannot recognize a new experience. it is impossible. we recognize only something wehave already known and therefore when we say

we have had a new experience it is not newat all. to seek further experience through expansion of consciousness, as is being donethrough various psychedelic drugs, is still within the field of consciousness and thereforevery limited. so we have discovered a fundamental truth,which is that a mind that is seeking, craving, for wider and deeper experience is a veryshallow and dull mind because it lives always with its memories. now if we didn't have any experience at all,what would happen to us? we depend on experiences, on challenges, to keep us awake. if therewere no conflicts within ourselves, no changes, no disturbances, we would all be fast asleep.so challenges are necessary for most of us;

we think that without them our minds willbecome stupid and heavy, and therefore we depend on a challenge, an experience, to giveus more excitement, more intensity, to make our minds sharper. but in fact this dependenceon challenges and experiences to keep us awake, only makes our minds duller—it doesn't reallykeep us awake at all. so i ask myself, is it possible to keep awake totally, not peripherallyat a few points of my being, but totally awake without any challenge or any experience? thisimplies a great sensitivity, both physical and psychological; it means i have to be freeof all demands, for the moment i demand i will experience. and to be free of demandand satisfaction necessitates investigation into myself and an understanding of the wholenature of demand.

demand is born out of duality: 'i am unhappyand i must be happy'. in that very demand that i must be happy is unhappiness. whenone makes an effort to be good, in that very goodness is its opposite, evil. everythingaffirmed contains its own opposite, and effort to overcome strengthens that against whichit strives. when you demand an experience of truth or reality, that very demand is bornout of your discontent with what is, and therefore the demand creates the opposite. and in theopposite there is what has been. so one must be free of this incessant demand, otherwisethere will be no end to the corridor of duality. this means knowing yourself so completelythat the mind is no longer seeking. such a mind does not demand experience; itcannot ask for a challenge or know a challenge;

it does not say, 'i am asleep' or 'i am awake'.it is completely what it is. only the frustrated, narrow, shallow mind, the conditioned mind,is always seeking the more. is it possible then to live in this world without the more—withoutthis everlasting comparison? surely it is? but one has to find out for oneself. investigation into this whole question ismeditation. that word has been used both in the east and the west in a most unfortunateway. there are different schools of meditation, different methods and systems. there are systemswhich say, 'watch the movement of your big toe, watch it, watch it, watch it'; thereare other systems which advocate sitting in a certain posture, breathing regularly orpractising awareness. all this is utterly

mechanical. another method gives you a certainword and tells you that if you go on repeating it you will have some extraordinary transcendentalexperience. this is sheer nonsense. it is a form of self-hypnosis. by repeating amenor om or coca-cola indefinitely you will obviously have a certain experience because by repetitionthe mind becomes quiet. it is a well known phenomenon which has been practised for thousandsof years in india—mantra yoga it is called. by repetition you can induce the mind to begentle and soft but it is still a petty, shoddy, little mind. you might as well put a pieceof stick you have picked up in the garden on the mantelpiece and give it a flower everyday. in a month you will be worshipping it and not to put a flower in front of it willbecome a sin.

meditation is not following any system; itis not constant repetition and imitation. meditation is not concentration. it is oneof the favourite gambits of some teachers of meditation to insist on their pupils learningconcentration—that is, fixing the mind on one thought and driving out all other thoughts.this is a most stupid, ugly thing, which any schoolboy can do because he is forced to.it means that all the time you are having a battle between the insistence that you mustconcentrate on the one hand and your mind on the other which wanders away to all sortsof other things, whereas you should be attentive to every movement of the mind wherever itwanders. when your mind wanders off it means you are interested in something else.

meditation demands an astonishingly alertmind; meditation is the understanding of the totality of life in which every form of fragmentationhas ceased. meditation is not control of thought, for when thought is controlled it breeds conflictin the mind, but when you understand the structure and origin of thought, which we have alreadybeen into, then thought will not interfere. that very understanding of the structure ofthinking is its own discipline which is meditation. meditation is to be aware of every thoughtand of every feeling, never to say it is right or wrong but just to watch it and move withit. in that watching you begin to understand the whole movement of thought and feeling.and out of this awareness comes silence. silence put together by thought is stagnation, isdead, but the silence that comes when thought

has understood its own beginning, the natureof itself, understood how all thought is never free but always old—this silence is meditationin which the meditator is entirely absent, for the mind has emptied itself of the past. if you have read this book for a whole hourattentively, that is meditation. if you have merely taken away a few words and gathereda few ideas to think about later, then it is no longer meditation. meditation is a stateof mind which looks at everything with complete attention, totally, not just parts of it.and no one can teach you how to be attentive. if any system teaches you how to be attentive,then you are attentive to the system and that is not attention. meditation is one of thegreatest arts in life—perhaps the greatest,

and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody,that is the beauty of it. it has no technique and therefore no authority. when you learn about yourself, watch yourself,watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy—ifyou are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation. so meditation can take place when you aresitting in a bus or walking in the woods full of light and shadows, or listening to thesinging of birds or looking at the face of your wife or child. in the understanding of meditation there islove, and love is not the product of systems,

of habits, of following a method. love cannotbe cultivated by thought. love can perhaps come into being when there is complete silence,a silence in which the meditator is entirely absent; and the mind can be silent only whenit understands its own movement as thought and feeling. to understand this movement ofthought and feeling there can be no condemnation in observing it. to observe in such a wayis the discipline, and that kind of discipline is fluid, free, not the discipline of conformity. xvi total revolution — the religious mind — energy— passion what we have been concerned with all throughthis book is the bringing about in ourselves,

and therefore in our lives, of a total revolutionthat has nothing whatsoever to do with the structure of society as it is. society asit is, is a horrifying thing with its endless wars of aggression, whether that aggressionbe defensive or offensive. what we need is something totally new—a revolution, a mutation,in the psyche itself. the old brain cannot possibly solve the human problem of relationship.the old brain is asiatic, european, american or african, so what we are asking ourselvesis whether it is possible to bring about a mutation in the brain cells themselves? let us ask ourselves again, now that we havecome to understand ourselves better, is it possible for a human being living an ordinaryeveryday life in this brutal, violent, ruthless

world—a world which is becoming more andmore efficient and therefore more and more ruthless—is it possible for him to bringabout a revolution not only in his outward relationships but in the whole field of histhinking, feeling, acting and reacting? every day we see or read of appalling thingshappening in the world as the result of violence in man. you may say, 'i can't do anythingabout it', or, 'how can i influence the world?' i think you can tremendously influence theworld if in yourself you are not violent, if you lead actually every day a peacefullife—a life which is not competitive, ambitious, envious—a life which does not create enmity.small fires can become a blaze. we have reduced the world to its present state of chaos byour self-centred activity, by our prejudices,

our hatreds, our nationalism, and when wesay we cannot do anything about it, we are accepting disorder in ourselves as inevitable.we have splintered the world into fragments and if we ourselves are broken, fragmented,our relationship with the world will also be broken. but if, when we act, we act totally,then our relationship with the world undergoes a tremendous revolution. after all, any movement which is worthwhile,any action which has any deep significance, must begin with each one of us. i must changefirst; i must see what is the nature and structure of my relationship with the world—and inthe very seeing is the doing; therefore i, as a human being living in the world, bringabout a different quality, and that quality,

it seems to me, is the quality of the religiousmind. the religious mind is something entirely differentfrom the mind that believes in religion. you cannot be religious and yet be a hindu, amuslim, a christian, a buddhist. a religious mind does not seek at all, it cannot experimentwith truth. truth is not something dictated by your pleasure or pain, or by your conditioningas a hindu or whatever religion you belong to. the religious mind is a state of mindin which there is no fear and therefore no belief whatsoever but only what is—whatactually is. in the religious mind there is that stateof silence we have already examined which is not produced by thought but is the outcomeof awareness, which is meditation when the

meditator is entirely absent. in that silencethere is a state of energy in which there is no conflict. energy is action and movement.all action is movement and all action is energy. all desire is energy. all feeling is energy.all thought is energy. all living is energy. all life is energy. if that energy is allowedto flow without any contradiction, without any friction, without any conflict, then thatenergy is boundless, endless. when there is no friction there are no frontiers to energy.it is friction which gives energy limitations. so, having once seen this, why is it thatthe human being always brings friction into energy? why does he create friction in thismovement which we call life? is pure energy, energy without limitation, just an idea tohim? does it have no reality?

we need energy not only to bring about a totalrevolution in ourselves but also in order to investigate, to look, to act. and as longas there is friction of any kind in any of our relationships, whether between husbandand wife, between man and man, between one community and another or one country and anotheror one ideology and another—if there is any inward friction or any outward conflictin any form, however subtle it may be—there is a waste of energy. as long as there is a time interval betweenthe observer and the observed it creates friction and therefore there is a waste of energy.that energy is gathered to its highest point when the observer is the observed, in whichthere is no time interval at all. then there

will be energy without motive and it willfind its own channel of action because then the 'i' does not exist. we need a tremendous amount of energy to understandthe confusion in which we live, and the feeling, 'i must understand', brings about the vitalityto find out. but finding out, searching, implies time, and, as we have seen, gradually to unconditionthe mind is not the way. time is not the way. whether we are old or young it is now thatthe whole process of life can be brought into a different dimension. seeking the oppositeof what we are is not the way either, nor is the artificial discipline imposed by asystem, a teacher, a philosopher or priest—all that is so very childish. when we realizethis, we ask ourselves is it possible to break

through this heavy conditioning of centuriesimmediately and not enter into another conditioning—to be free, so that the mind can be altogethernew, sensitive, alive, aware, intense, capable? that is our problem. there is no other problembecause when the mind is made new it can tackle any problem. that is the only question wehave to ask ourselves. but we do not ask. we want to be told. oneof the most curious things in the structure of our psyche is that we all want to be toldbecause we are the result of the propaganda of ten thousand years. we want to have ourthinking confirmed and corroborated by another, whereas to ask a question is to ask it ofyourself. what i say has very little value. you will forget it the moment you shut thisbook, or you will remember and repeat certain

phrases, or you will compare what you haveread here with some other book—but you will not face your own life. and that is all thatmatters—your life, yourself, your pettiness, your shallowness, your brutality, your violence,your greed, your ambition, your daily agony and endless sorrow—that is what you haveto understand and nobody on earth or in heaven is going to save you from it but yourself. seeing everything that goes on in your dailylife, your daily activities—when you pick up a pen, when you talk, when you go out fora drive or when you are walking alone in the woods—can you with one breath, with onelook, know yourself very simply as you are? when you know yourself as you are, then youunderstand the whole structure of man's endeavour,

his deceptions, his hypocrisies, his search.to do this you must be tremendously honest with yourself throughout your being. whenyou act according to your principles you are being dishonest because when you act accordingto what you think you ought to be you are not what you are. it is a brutal thing tohave ideals. if you have any ideals, beliefs or principles you cannot possibly look atyourself directly. so can you be completely negative, completely quiet, neither thinkingnor afraid, and yet be extraordinarily, passionately alive? that state of mind which is no longer capableof striving is the true religious mind, and in that state of mind you may come upon thisthing called truth or reality or bliss or

god or beauty or love. this thing cannot beinvited. please understand that very simple fact. it cannot be invited, it cannot be soughtafter, because the mind is too silly, too small, your emotions are too shoddy, yourway of life too confused for that enormity, that immense something, to be invited intoyour little house, your little corner of living which has been trampled and spat upon. youcannot invite it. to invite it you must know it and you cannot know it. it doesn't matterwho says it, the moment he says, 'i know', he does not know. the moment you say you havefound it you have not found it. if you say you have experienced it, you have never experiencedit. those are all ways of exploiting another man—your friend or your enemy.

one asks oneself then whether it is possible to come upon this thing without inviting,without waiting, without seeking or exploring—just for it to happen like a cool breeze that comesin when you leave the window open? you cannot invite the wind but you must leave the windowopen, which doesn't mean that you are in a state of waiting; that is another form ofdeception. it doesn't mean you must open yourself to receive; that is another kind of thought. haven't you ever asked yourself why it isthat human beings lack this thing? they beget children, they have sex, tenderness, a qualityof sharing something together in companionship, in friendship, in fellowship, but this thing—whyis it they haven't got it? haven't you ever

wondered lazily on occasion when you are walkingby yourself in a filthy street or sitting in a bus or are on holiday by the seasideor walking in a wood with a lot of birds, trees, streams and wild animals—hasn't itever come upon you to ask why it is that man, who has lived for millions and millions ofyears, has not got this thing, this extraordinary unfading flower? why is it that you, as ahuman being, who are so capable, so clever, so cunning, so competitive, who have suchmarvellous technology, who go to the skies and under the earth and beneath the sea, andinvent extraordinary electronic brains—why is it that you haven't got this one thingwhich matters? i don't know whether you have ever seriously faced this issue of why yourheart is empty.

what would your answer be if you put the questionto yourself—your direct answer without any equivocation or cunningness? your answer wouldbe in accordance with your intensity in asking the question and the urgency of it. but youare neither intense nor urgent, and that is because you haven't got energy, energy beingpassion—and you cannot find any truth without passion—passion with a fury behind it, passionin which there is no hidden want. passion is a rather frightening thing because if youhave passion you don't know where it will take you. so is fear perhaps the reason why you havenot got the energy of that passion to find out for yourself why this quality of loveis missing in you, why there is not this flame

in your heart? if you have examined your ownmind and heart very closely, you will know why you haven't got it. if you are passionatein your discovery to find why you haven't got it, you will know it is there. throughcomplete negation alone, which is the highest form of passion, that thing which is love,comes into being. like humility you cannot cultivate love. humility comes into beingwhen there is a total ending of conceit—then you will never know what it is to be humble.a man who knows what it is to have humility is a vain man. in the same way when you giveyour mind and your heart, your nerves, your eyes, your whole being to find out the wayof life, to see what actually is and go beyond it, and deny completely, totally, the lifeyou live now—in that very denial of the

ugly, the brutal, the other comes into being.and you will never know it either. a man who knows that he is silent, who knows that heloves, does not know what love is or what silence is.