Mind Without Measure

Most people who meditate follow various systems. Each one has his own guru and he has laid down certain systems of meditation, and you practise, repeat certain words over and over again and you call that meditation. When you repeat over and over again, what is happening to your brain? You become more and more dull. You become a machine and you think that is meditation. You will go on doing it in spite of what the speaker is saying. In enquiring what is meditation, there can be no system, no effort. Effort means conflict. Can you be free of systems, practice, realizing the fact that your brain, your senses, become dull? Can you be free of systems? Can the mind, the brain, realize what it means to follow somebody, to obey what somebody else tells you to do because he calls himself a guru? All those things have destroyed the beauty of a religious mind. Meditation is none of these things, yoga included. Then what is meditation? You want experience. You are craving for some strange experience, so-called spiritual experience. You have enough of experiences in this world, of pain, anxiety, sorrow, and you say we want something more, greater experience. Experience has nothing whatsoever to do with meditation. To experience, there must be an experiencer, and if there is an experiencer, that experiencer is the continuity of past memories which is the self. Meditation is the understanding of the whole structure of the `me', the self, the ego, and whether it is possible to be totally free of the self, not seek some super-self. The super-self is still the self. So meditation is something which is not a cultivated, determined, activity. There must be freedom, and where there is freedom, there is space. Have we space apart from the physical world? Have we, living in Bombay, space? Hardly. We live in a little flat or a little room, and our minds gradually accept that little space. We are talking of space which has no walls. You know, when you look at the sea, when the smog has gone and you see the far horizon, the vast disc, and when you look up at the stars and see their extraordinary brightness and the vast space and the space that you have in your mind, how small it is, how narrow it is; that space in your heart and mind is so controlled, shaped, put together. There is hardly any space in you. To understand that which is sacred, there must be vast space in you, not out there in the sea. Space is not separation. Space is not division. When you divide, there is space between you and your wife, between you as India and another country, but that is not space. The space inwardly can only exist when there is no conflict whatsoever. Then when there is that vast limitless space of the mind, then only in that space there is energy, not the energy and friction of thought, because that energy is born out of freedom. When there is that space and silence and that immeasurable energy, then there is that which is utterly nameless, measureless, timeless; then there is that which is sacred. But to find that, one must have great love, great compassion, which must begin at home. You must love your wife, your children, your husband. love cannot exist with attachment. If it is attachment, then you have all the problems of life. So, sirs and ladies, it is your life. Either you bring about a great radical, psychological revolution in yourself or the experts of the genetic world are going to make you do something. Then you will become merely machines. Then life will have very little meaning. But there is great significance, great meaning, if you are aware what love is, compassion and intelligence. Then out of that comes great silence and vast space. All that cannot exist if there is any shadow of selfishness. And this is meditation, and not the repetition of words, not the discipline of will, but the discipline of order which comes when there is no conflict.

Also we should talk about religion. It is a very complex question. Together we are going to find out a mind that is religious, not the mind that does puja, all the ceremonies, beliefs, and all that. That is not religion. Those are all the inventions of thought. God is your invention because you find life so dull, boring. It is such a pain. So you invent god who is all-perfect, all-loving; you worship that, and you worship that which you have put together by thought. So thought is deceiving you. But you will go on because you love to live in illusion. We must find out what is a religious mind, because a religious mind brings about a new world, a new civilization, a new culture, a new outburst of energy. One must find out for oneself what is a religious mind, not be told, not be directed, not be explained to. So what is a religious mind? You can only find out if you deny totally all the present religious structure, religious beliefs and ideas, because it is only a free mind that can find out what is the quality of the religious mind.

First of all, one can see very clearly that freedom is essential, not freedom from something. A prisoner wants freedom, which means first he is caught in a prison, then he wants freedom to leave that prison. That is only a reaction. That reaction is not freedom. Freedom implies the total ending of all illusions, of all beliefs, of all your accumulated wants, desires. A religious mind is a sane, healthy, factual mind; it faces facts, not ideas. The speaker can go on explaining what is a religious mind. Perhaps you will accept the definitions or deny the definitions; and merely arguing, analysing, questioning, may help, but it may not necessarily bring about a religious mind. So one has to have a great humility, a sense of not knowing. Also a religious mind acts, because it is compassionate. That action is born of intelligence. Intelligence, love, compassion, all go together. That is meditation. Don't suddenly sit up properly. That has no meaning. You may sit cross-legged, breathe properly, practise various systems; that is not meditation.

Each one of us, we think, is a separate entity; we think we are so-called individuals. What is that individuality - the name, the form, what you remember, your attitudes, your loneliness, your pain, your anxiety, your chaos, your sorrow and uncertainty? You may live in a nice house or in a small room or a nice flat but you are all that. You are the bank account. When you are attached to a bank account, you are the bank account; when you are attached to a house, you are the house; when you are attached to your body, you are that. You may have lovely furniture, and it may be marvellous furniture, and if you are attached to that, you are that furniture. So you are all that. When you are attached to a chair, to a person, to an idea, to an ideal, to a personal experience, what are the implications of that attachment? Why are you attached, because death says you cannot be attached, that is the end of it. You may believe in the future, but death says you have ended, your attachment is over, your bank account is over, your guru and all your following is over. So what is it that continues, that is reborn - memories, ideas? Which is what? - something dead, or is there no continuity at all? Think, search out, please. Continuity means that which is going on modifying itself. You are becoming something, and achieving it and wanting more. Continuity implies security, certainty. Are you certain about anything? Is there security in your ideas? We want continuity. We hope to have continuity because, in continuity we thing there is security. One has been married for ten years, fifteen years or fifty years, there is certain continuity, but in that continuity there is conflict, misery, unhappiness, all the rest of that. So there is no continuity at all. There is constant change if you are aware of it. Either that can be superficial or a total mutation, change. That which has existed completely undergoes a change. One must find out for oneself what is the truth of this matter. One cannot be convinced by argument, by so-called evidence, and so on. One cannot be convinced of anything. One has to search out, seek and find what is true and what is illusion. We have lived with this illusion that we are separate entities, whereas if you examine very closely, your consciousness, which is you is shared by all humanity. They suffer as you suffer, they are as uncertain as you are; they are lonely, miserable, confused, anxious, as you are. So your consciousness is not yours. It is the consciousness of all humanity. You are the entire humanity. It is not mere logical conclusion or observation. That is a fact. We have been trained, educated, both religiously and educationally, that we are separate individuals. We are frightened that individuality should come to an end. With such a thought, such concept as an individual, when one approached the question of death, there is immense fear of ending. But if one sees the reality, the truth that you are the rest of mankind, then what is death?

We first begin by asking what is the significance of death. It is the question of all humanity whether we are very young or very old. What is the meaning, the significance, of the extraordinary thing called death? Yesterday evening, we talked about several things including what is love, compassion; what is the relationship of life which is not only the whole human existence, what is its relationship to love, to death and to the whole search of man for thousands of years to find something that is beyond all thought. We have to understand the meaning of death because we are all going to die. That is absolute certainty. We are so afraid of it or we rationalize it. You say `yes', I accept it, I accept death as I accept pain, as I accept sorrow, as I accept loneliness; I also accept death, which is to submit, to suffer death, to allow the whole of existence of a human being to come to an end, either through disease, through old age or through some incident. We never find out while we are living what it means to die, to understand the depth of it. You are looking at it as an incident of life, as a fact of life, as violence is a fact of life, as hatred is a fact of life. If we are at all reasonable, sane, we must look at this question of death in similar manner, not accept it, not just say it is inevitable or try to find out what lies beyond death, but to observe the nature of dying.

Then a totally different action takes place, a totally different chemical action takes place. It is not an intellectual achievement, not the intellectual concept of the truth but to see the fact, the truth of it, that you are not different from your qualities, you are not different from your anger, jealousy, hatred, but you are all that, You know what happens when you realize that, not verbally but inwardly? Find out. Are you waiting for me to tell you? I won't. You see how your mind works. You are waiting for me to tell you; you don't want to find out. If I tell you, then you will say yes, right or wrong, but you will go on, but find out for yourself the actual truth of it, that the observer is the observed, the watcher is the watched, that you are the whole bundle of your consciousness, the content of your consciousness is what you are and the content of that consciousness is put together by thought. Now, to find out, not the ending of thought, but to find out how to observe the content, when you observe without the division, then a totally different action takes place. Where there is love, there is no observer. There is no you and the one that you love. There is only that quality of love.

We ought to talk over together what is love. Would you say that you love somebody, love without attachment, love without jealousy? If there is attachment, there is no love. If there is any kind of antagonism, hate, love cannot exist. Where there is fear, love cannot exist. Where there is ambition, love cannot exist; where there is power of any kind, the other cannot be. If you have power over your wife or if you possess your husband or if you are ambitious, then love is not. We are asking, do you love, because without love, suffering will go on. We have to search out, seek out whether there is a possibility of ending sorrow, because all these are linked together. Sorrow is not different from fear. Sorrow is not different from thought. Sorrow is not different from hate, the wounds, the psychological wounds that we receive. They are all related to each other. It is one issue, not separate issues. It is something that you have to approach wholly, not partially. But if you approach it intellectually, ideally or idealistically, romantically, then you don't see the wholeness of life. So we are searching out if there is a possibility of ending sorrow. Fear, pleasure and sorrow have existed from time beyond thought.

Man has always had these three factors in life - fear, the pursuit of pleasure and sorrow, and apparently he has not gone beyond that. He has tried every method, every system that you can think of, tried to suppress it, tried to escape from it, tried to invent the gods and surrender all this to that invention, but that has not worked either. So we must find out whether sorrow can end, whether we can understand the nature of sorrow, the causes of sorrow. Is the cause different from fear, is the cause different from pleasure, pleasure of achievement, pleasure of talent, pleasure of wealth? Let us find out whether sorrow and fear can ever end. The pursuit of pleasure is infinite, is endless, the pleasure of achievement, the pleasure of being attached to somebody, whether that attachment is to a person, to an idea or to a conclusion. While you are pursuing that pleasure, there is always the shadow of fear with it. Where there is fear, there is sorrow. But they are all together. They are all interrelated, and one must deal with them all wholly, not separately. Be clear that we are not dealing with sorrow separately as though it was something different from fear. We are looking, searching out the nature of sorrow and the ending of sorrow, because where there is sorrow, there is no love.

Sorrow expresses itself in so many ways - the sorrow of loneliness, the sorrow of seeing this vast country where there is poverty, corruption, utter disregard for another human being, carelessness. When you watch all this day after day, that is also sorrow, the utter neglect by all the politicians all over the world. They only want power, position, and where there is power, there is evil. And sorrow is the loss of someone you love. Sorrow of losing, sorrow of ending something you have cherished, something that you have held on to, the sorrow of doubt, the sorrow of seeing one's own life such an empty shell, meaningless existence. You may have money, sex, children, be very fashionable, rich, but it is an empty life. There is no depth in it. Seeing that, perceiving the nature of it, is also sorrow. So can sorrow end? It is not your sorrow. It is also mine and another's. Don't deal with sorrow as your particular precious stuff. It is shared by all humanity. Deal with it not as your particular sorrow, your private quiet sorrow, but as the sorrow of all human beings, whether you are a man or a woman, rich or poor, sophisticated or at the height of your excellence. Please don't deal with all these factors like fear, pleasure, sorrow, love, and so on as something separate from each other. You must approach this whole thing wholly, not fragmentarily. If you approach it fragmentarily, you will never solve it. So, look at greed, pain, sorrow, as a whole movement of life, not something different from life. This is our daily life. To find whether there is an end to all this - to misery, to conflict, pain, sorrow and fear - one must be able to perceive them, one must be able to be aware of them.

So what is thinking? Why has it become so extraordinarily important in your life? Please understand this. Give your mind to this. Because love and thinking cannot go together. Compassion is not the product of thought. love cannot exist in the shadow of thought. love is not remembrance. Please give your heart and mind to the understanding of this - that thinking is common to all of us. It is not individual thinking. You may express it and another may express it differently, most scholastically, and another may not, but thinking is shared by all. So what is thinking? When that question is put to you, you begin to think, don't you? Or do you listen to the question? If you listen to the question, which is, your mind is not interfering with your conclusions, with your ideas, and so on, if you are listening with all your attention, which means with all your senses totally awakened, then you will see for yourself what is the origin of thinking. The origin of thinking is experience. Experience gives knowledge, whether it is scientific knowledge or the knowledge about wife or husband.

We must together perceive for ourselves what is truth and what is false; not to be told what is false or what is true, what is ignorance and what is knowledge, but to find for ourselves a quiet corner in ourselves, living in this dreadful city, living in small spaces, working all day long, commuting, going to great distances in crowded trains and buses. We must find for ourselves a quiet corner, not in a house or in a garden or an empty lane but deep within ourselves, and from there act, live, and find out for ourselves what is beauty, what is time, the nature and the movement of fear, the pursuit of pleasure and the ending of sorrow. We must have such a corner, not in the mind but in the heart, because then, where there is affection and love, intellect, understanding, comes clarity, and from that there is action. But most of us live such strenuous, conflicting, lives with much pressure around us. If we don't find for ourselves some inward space, a space not created by thought, a space uncontaminated, clear, in which there is a light which is not lit by another, a light to ourselves so that we are totally free, we are not free human beings. We think we are free. We think we are free because we can choose, because we can do what we want, but freedom is something entirely different from the desire to do what we want. So we must together find for ourselves without guidance, without help, without any outside agency telling us what to do, how to behave, what is right action, and find in ourselves a space that has no ending and no beginning.

Where there is love, there is no loneliness. Where there is love in your heart, there is no problem. Having stated that, don't make it into a problem. Look at the fact. The fact is that we are not sensitive, that we don't have the depth of beauty. The fact is that we don't love; we don't look at it, try to remain with it, to see `that is so', not try to rationalize it. It is so, that I don't love my wife; you know what it means to say that to yourself. You should cry. I want to cry for you all. Sirs, it is like two parallel lines never meeting and therefore increasing conflict day after day till you die. See the fact that there is no love in your heart, to have the mind in your heart. We think love can be achieved, cultivated. love is not something to cultivate. Either there is or there is not. If there is not, look at it, hold it, realize what you are without love in your heart; it then becomes a machine - insensitive, vulgar, coarse, only concerned with sex and pleasure. Sirs, please, I am not harassing you, I am not scolding you. I am just pointing out what is happening. Your knowledge, your books, have destroyed you because love is not found in the books. It does not lie with knowledge. Knowledge and love don't go together. Then you say: `I know my wife', but that is your knowledge which is your image about her. That knowledge is put together by thought, and thought is not love. So, having stated all this, do you have love in your heart or is it something romantic, nonsensical, impractical, valueless? It does not give you any money; that is so. Having heard all this, is there a comprehension of the depth of that word so that your mind is in the heart? Then you have right relationship. When you have right relationship, which means love, you can never go wrong.

To meet your wife or your husband, your children, your neighbour, at the same time, at the same level, with the same intensity, that is love. Do you understand this? To meet somebody, you must meet him at the same time, at the same level, with the same intensity.

Relationship is one of the most important things in life. Why have we made it such a confusion and such misery? What is relationship? The word implies being in contact, not only physical contact, not sexual contact - that you all know - but to be in contact mentally, emotionally, inwardly, with another so that there is no division in that contact. That is relationship. But we have not got that contact. You are ambitious and your wife also is ambitious. You want this and she wants something else. She may be right and you may be wrong. She wants to live in a marvellous house and you say `Please, for god's sake; she wants to be popular and you don't care. You are a scholar, a professor in your own little groove, and she has also her own little groove. So you are never in contact with each other except sexually. This is a fact. And you call that relationship. You have an image about her or she has an image about you. Where does love come into all this? Do you understand my question? When one says to one's wife, I love you, what does it mean? I don't know whether you say it at all. I doubt it. But if you do say it, what does it mean to love another? Relationship means to love another. What does that word mean? I love this or I love that, I love god, I love my guru. What does that love mean? Is it based on reward and punishment? Look at it sirs, because we are always caught between the two - reward and punishment. I follow the guru because he is going to promise me heaven, give me comfort. We are caught in this. Is relationship a reward and punishment process? Is love a movement of that? Think it out.

Meditation is to live a diligent life. Meditation is not separate from daily living; it is not going off into a little corner, meditating for twenty minutes every day or every afternoon, every evening; that is just having a siesta. There is no system. System implies practice. Practice means measurement - from what you are to what you want to be, and you may be practising the wrong note. And probably you are. You call that meditation. That meditation is totally separate from your daily living. Find out whether it is possible to live a daily life of meditation which means no measurement at any time. In meditation, there is no control because the controller is the controlled. In meditation there is no will because will is desire. The essence of desire is will - `I will meditate, I will practise this day after day.' In meditation there is no effort at all because there is no controller. Meditation implies awareness, awareness of the earth, the beauty of the earth, the dead leaf, the dying dog, to be aware of your environment; to be aware of your neighbour; to be aware of the colours you carry, why you wear that colour and those beads, to be aware of that. To be aware of the beauty of the wind among the leaves, to be aware of your thoughts, your feelings, that is, to be aware without choice - just to be aware. That heightens your sensitivity - to observe diligently everything. When you say I will do something, do it, never forgetting what you have said. Do not say something you don't mean. That is part of meditation. That is, to be aware of your feelings, your condition. your opinions, your judgments, and your beliefs so that in that awareness there is no choice - just to be aware of the beauty of the earth, the skies and the lovely waters. When you are so aware, then there is attention; to attend not only to see the speaker but also to what your wife is telling you or your husband is telling you or your children are telling you, what the politicians are telling you - their trickery, their search for power, position. When you so profoundly attend, there is no centre as the `me' to attend. That is also meditation.

Now we ought to ask a question: what is meditation? We are together going to examine what is meditation, not how to meditate, but what is the nature, the quality, the structure, the beauty of meditation. The word `meditation means to ponder over, to think over, to consider, to probe, to investigate, to look, according to the dictionary. And the word `meditation also means measurement, to measure. I believe in Sanskrit ma is to measure. Measurement means comparison. Have you ever considered how the ancient Greece in 450 B.C. exploded all over Europe? Greece was responsible for measurement; the Greeks invented measurement. Without measurement there can be no technology. And the Western world is capable of great technology, which has moved to Japan. The ancient Indians said that measurement is illusion; India exploded all over Asia. Don't be proud of it, it is all gone. You have lost the one thing that was so precious. You have lost the greatest jewel that you had ever had. So meditation means to think, to ponder, and also it means to measure. That is, I am this, I must be that; I am comparing myself with yourself who are clever, beautiful, lovely, and I am not; that is measurement. Following an example is measurement. Wherever there is comparison psychologically, meditation cannot be. Where there is measurement, comparison, there cannot be meditation. You can compare between two cars, between two materials, better cloth, better paper, better house, better food, but where the mind thinks in terms psychologically of the better, meditation is not possible. You can sit cross-legged, do all kinds of yoga, all kinds of control, but where there is control, there is measurement. Where there is control, there must be conflict and there must be measurement, and that is not meditation.

And what is compassion? - not the definition that you can look up in a dictionary. What is the relationship between love and compassion, or are they the same movement? When we use the word `relationship', it implies a duality, a separation, but we are asking what place has love in compassion, or is love the highest expression of compassion? How can one be compassionate if you belong to any religion, follow any guru, believe in something, believe in your scriptures, and so on, attached to a conclusion? When you accept your guru, you have come to a conclusion, or when you strongly believe in god or in a saviour, this or that, can there be compassion? You may do social work, help the poor out of pity, out of sympathy, out of charity, but is all that love and compassion? In understanding the nature of love, having that quality which is mind in the heart, that is intelligence. Intelligence is the understanding or the discovering of what love is. Intelligence has nothing whatsoever to do with thought, with cleverness, with knowledge. You may be very clever in your studies, in your job, in being able to argue very cleverly, reasonably, but that is not intelligence. Intelligence goes with love and compassion, and you cannot come upon that intelligence as an individual. Compassion is not yours or mine like thought is not yours or mine. When there is intelligence, there is no me and you. And intelligence does not abide in your heart or your mind. That intelligence which is supreme is everywhere. It is that intelligence that moves the earth and the heavens and the stars, because that is compassion.

So we ought to look into what is love. That word has been so spoilt. We have given to that word such shallow meaning. One may say, I love my wife. One questions that love. That love may be attachment, that love may be seeking comfort, pleasure sexually, the pleasure of companionship, and so on. We are going to consider what is love, to see the depth of it, the beauty and the extraordinary quality of it. love may be related to death.

Surely, to find something true one must negate that which is not true, negate the false. To discover what is false and what is true and what is true in the false, one requires not only the capacity to think clearly but to demand, ask questions. So what is love? Would you say love is desire? Would you say love is pleasure? Would you say love is attachment? The speaker is asking these questions for you to answer to yourself; answer, not to deceive yourself, which is so easy to do. One may think that one is a marvellous human being, and that one is out of all this. But to find out that which is not love, that is negation, and it is the most positive action. We are asking, is desire love? Desire is a wandering movement, and is love wandering, unstable, weak, or is it something as strong, as vital as death? Is love pleasure, sexual pleasure, the pleasure of owning, dominating, possessing a person? Is that love? Is attachment to the person - my wife, my husband, my family, which means to hold on, cling to - is that love? Or in attachment there is fear, jealousy, anxiety, hate? Where there is jealousy, there is hate. Is that love? Has hate any relationship with love? Is love the opposite of hate? Is the good opposite of that which is not good? If hate is the opposite of love, then hate has its root in love. All opposites have their root in their own opposites. Please examine your own life honestly and ask these questions. Desire, pleasure, attachment, jealousy, anxiety, fear of losing, is all that love? Can you be free of attachment, not at the last moment when death is there? Can you end attachment to another? See the implications of attachment, the consequences of attachment. Where there is jealousy, there is hate, anger. Is all that love?

Whereas, is it possible to approach it with a holistic movement? We never approach anything as a whole. We never look at life as a whole. We have fragmented life, broken it up as the intellect, the emotions, love, and so on, and so we can never look at a problem wholly. The word `whole' also means healthy - a healthy mind, not a crippled mind, not a stagnant mind, but a mind which is whole, a sense of covering the earth and the skies and the beauty of all that. `Whole' means also `holy'. In investigating, exploring, this question, one needs to have that quality of a mind in the heart which is not romantic, idealistic, imaginative, but a very factual mind, tempered with the quality of love. When we use the word `holy', we mean by that - mind in the heart, mind in the quality of love, which has nothing whatsoever to do with any ideals, with any obedience. There must be freedom to observe. So, together let us look at this question of what is sorrow and why man has put up with sorrow, why he has accepted it as he has accepted fear, as he has accepted pleasure, desire, all the things that man is surrounded with, both outwardly and inwardly.

Is it possible to end this enormous burden carried by humanity and by those who are still in sorrow? What is sorrow? What is the cause of sorrow? Where there is a cause, there is an end. If I have cancer, the cause, the pain, then perhaps the cause can be removed. So, where there is a cause for anything, there is an end to that. The causation is a movement; it is not a fixed point. If you can understand and discover the cause of this burden of sorrow, then perhaps we can understand the nature of love; not love of god, not the love of the guru, not the love of some book or a poem but the love of human beings - the love of your wife, the husband, your children. To find that extraordinary perfume that is really the light of the world, one must understand the nature of suffering, the structure of suffering.

This evening we ought to talk over together whether sorrow can ever end - the sorrow of man; what is love, what is compassion, what is intelligence, the significance of death, and the whole question of meditation. We have lived with sorrow generation upon generation - the grief, the sorrow of loneliness, the sorrow of great anxiety, the sorrow of having no proper relationship with another, the sorrow of a mother, of a father losing a son, of a wife whose husband has been killed in war. Also there is the sorrow of ignorance. Sorrow has many forms. It is not just one incident called death, it is not just one happening in one's life, but a series of incidents, of accidents and experiences which contain pleasure and pain, the sorrow of this movement of reward and punishment, the sorrow of old age, the sorrow of illness, blindness, of deformed children. Man has carried the great weight of sorrow and tries to escape from it. He invents all kinds of theories, all kinds of possibilities, romantic concepts, but sorrow remains with man. I wonder if one has looked at what wars have done to man - how many women, fathers, brothers, sisters, have shed tears because one holds on to nationalism, racial prejudices, linguistic differences. All this is causing enormous sorrow in the world. There is not only personal sorrow, the loss of something, the loss of someone whom you loved, but the loss of never having a single, happy, original day, the pain of seeing poverty in this land and doing nothing about it. Man has carried this sorrow from time beyond measure. We still are burdened, fearful, anxious, lonely, aching with deep inward pain, the lack of success, lack of opportunity, lack of the things we all want.

Yesterday evening we talked about fear, the nature of fear and what brings about fear. We said time, desire, thought, are the causes of fear and man has lived with fear. We live with fear now - fear of the past, fear of the future of man, what is going to happen to man. Surely, the future of man is what he is now. If he does not radically change, psychologically, inwardly, the future is what he is now. That is guaranteed because there will be more wars, more instruments of wars, more destruction, more violence, more fragmentation of human beings into nationalities, and so on. The future is what we are now. It is so urgently necessary to bring about the psychological revolution. What does it mean to bring about a change - not move from one form, one system, one idea to another, but is it possible for human beings who have lived on this lovely earth for so many millennia to change?

We are asking, what is the root of it? The root of it is time and thought. I had pain a couple of weeks ago and I fear it might return again, which is time. There is the remembrance of that pain and the fear that it may happen again. My wife has hurt me, as I have hurt her, not physically, but inwardly, and I hope she won't hurt me more by word or a gesture or by a tear. I am afraid she might hurt me, so there is fear. Fear is time and thought. If one understands the nature of time and thought and the movement and the wandering of desire, understand in the sense see the truth of it instantly, not the verbal conclusion of it but the fact of it, the reality of it, the depth of it, the intensity of it, if you do see it so clearly, then you will never ask how is fear to end. Nor can you ask, `How can I control thought', or `How am I to stop thought', which are the causes of fear. You will never ask that question because you cannot ask that question about it. You actually see the truth. It is there. It is there for you to see, not to accept, to argue, analyse, discuss, take sides; you can't. This is like seeing the most beautiful thing on earth, which is there - an excellent sea, an excellent mind which is there, a heart that is always aflame, which is there. If you see it, then fear ends. And where there is the ending of fear, there is no god. It is out of our fear, out of our desire, that we invent the gods. When a man is without fear, then he is a totally different human being and he needs no god. And sirs and ladies, give your heart to consider all this - not your mind, not your intellect. Intellect has its place, but when you are examining something very, very seriously, the head must enter into its consideration. When the heart enters, that is when there is love to observe, love of watching, seeing; then, when you see the truth of desire, time and thought, there is no fear whatsoever. Then only there can be love. Fear and love cannot go together. Fear and pleasure go together, but not love and fear.

Can we find out, without control, without suppression, just see how thought is acting upon sensation, even verbally, even intellectually, and go into it very deeply, to have such alertness, such care, such affection, such love to see its nature, how desire is born? You have to see what thought is, how thought makes all life a problem. Thought is a material movement. Thought is limited because all knowledge, all experience, is limited. Thought springs from knowledge, experience, memory. And this whole process is limited. There is no complete knowledge about anything, can never be. Science, technology, is always adding more and more. So, time, desire, thought, are the factors of fear. I am afraid of what might happen to me because I have had an accident a couple of days ago or a year ago, and I am afraid it might happen again. I am watchful. There is fear. I am afraid of the dark, I am afraid of the wife, the husband, I am afraid of my boss. Aren't you all afraid? Don't be ashamed. It is the common lot of man. You may not want to acknowledge it, you may not want to face it, but you are frightened, and fear does terrible things to human beings. Mentally, psychologically, it narrows down, it curtails. It makes human beings so bound to authority, to some ideas. They have become so dependent, so attached, so inhuman. We are not talking about the many expressions of desire, of fear, but fear itself. We are not talking about the various aspects of fear, but the root of it.

Now, we ought to talk over together what is desire because, time, desire and thought are the major factors of fear. What is desire? What is the wandering nature of desire, desire which is never content, the desire that all religions have said, suppress? Why have religious leaders all over the world, and all the books, said we must suppress our desire; desire is all right for god, but to desire a woman, desire a house, desire the lovely things of the earth, the beauty of a painting, the beauty of a statue, a poem of Keats, that you must not desire? We have learnt through the ages the art of suppressing desire or yielding to desire.

So, what is desire? - not the object of desire or the object creating the desire. Does the object create the desire or desire exists and the object varies? You must be clear on this point. You see a nice car, a nice shirt, a lovely house, a beautiful painting. That painting, house, the car, the woman, the man - does the object create the desire or desire exists and the objects don't matter? If the object creates desire, then it is a totally different investigation, but if desire exists and the nature of desire is not wandering from one thing to another, then it is difficult. We have to examine together what is the origin, the beginning, of desire; not how to control desire, not to suppress it, transcend it, but the beginning of it. If one can understand the origin, the source, of desire, then we can deal with it. If we don't ask the origin, the beginning, then we are merely trimming the branches of desire.

So, what is desire? We live by sensation. The reaction of our sensory responses is the activity of sensation. I see you well dressed, clean, healthy, beautiful, or whatever you are. I see it. The seeing is the beginning of sensory responses. The seeing, observing, contact and sensation are the responses of the senses. Right? Then what happens? I see a beautiful house, a lovely chalet in the mountains, beautifully built, strong. I see it, contact, touch it actually, and the sensation from it. Then what happens? This is really important to understand. I see a beautiful woman or a beautiful man. The very seeing of that beauty is a sensation, is it not? Then, what is the next step that takes place? You see a beautiful something, a statue which has been created by love and skill and matter. As you see it, sensation arises. You touch it, then what happens? Please find out for yourself. Then thought comes in and says, `How beautiful; I wish I had that statue in my room, I wish I was in that car, I wish I had that house.' At that moment when thought takes charge of sensation, at that precise moment, desire is born. Do you understand this, sir? Sensation is normal, healthy, vital; otherwise you are dead. To suppress sensation means you are dead, and probably that is what has happened here in this country. You read the Gita and Upanishads and all the sacred books and you follow guru after guru, discipline your desire, control it, suppress it, escape, and so on. Whereas, we are saving something entirely different. Can you follow the sensation, the immediate association of thought with the object, then thought saying, `How nice it would be if I sat in that beautiful car which has tremendous power behind it'? - then begins desire. Now, is it possible for thought not to intervene, not immediately, thought saying `I will see myself in the car'? Is there an interval between sensation and thought, so that thought does not immediately take charge, so that there is a gap? If there is a gap, what happens? That requires extraordinary skill and attention, to see where sensations are important, because, if your senses are not alive, you cannot see the beauty of the earth, the movement of the sea. So sensations, the sensory responses, are essential for life, but when thought controls, shapes, gives identity to sensation, then at that precise moment desire is born.

We have been talking over together, in a conversation between two people, the very complex process of our living from the time we are born till we die. We talked about whether it is possible at all to live a life without a single shadow of conflict - conflict in our relationship with each other, however intimate or far away. Conflict brings about disorder, and as long as each one of us lives in disorder, we cannot possibly bring about a psychological revolution in the structure of society. This evening we ought to talk over the nature of time, desire, fear, pleasure, and whether sorrow, which happens to be the lot of man throughout the world, has an end to it. Together you and the speaker are going to investigate the nature of time, explore desire which is very complex, and talk over together as to whether there is an end to sorrow. Because, where there is sorrow, there cannot be love, there can be no compassion, there can be no intelligence. So, it is important that you and the speaker meet at the same level, at the same time, with the same intensity. Otherwise, there will be no possibility of communication. One hopes we will meet on the same level because, the speaker has no authority, he is not telling you what to do, or what you should do with your life; but when we are together, discussing, having a dialogue over a problem, that problem is the concern of both the speaker and you. It is your concern as well as that of the speaker. Merely to meet at a verbal level, as most of us do, has very little significance because we are concerned with not physical revolution, but psychological revolution - inward, radical, fundamental change. We have lived for millennia after millennia, for thousands of years, with sorrow, pain, anxiety, loneliness, despair, fear and the pursuit of wandering desire, and man has always asked if there is a stop to time.

What is time? Time fundamentally means division, evolution, achievement, moving from here to there, the constant division as of yesterday, today and tomorrow - sun rising, sun setting, the full moon of a lovely evening and the time to meet your friend. Time is hope. Time is a very complex affair, and that requires patience. Patience is timeless; it is only impatience that has time. To enquire into the nature of time, one must have a great deal of patience, not impatience, not say `get on, I understand what you are talking about.' We have divided our life in a time movement. Movement is time. To go from here to there requires time. To learn a language requires time. To accumulate knowledge, to experience, looking forward to something as fear or as pleasure, the memories of yesterday, a thousand yesterdays, meeting the present, modifying and moving towards the future, all this is time. For a clerk to become the manager, to acquire any skill, requires time. The desire to experience something other than the usual experience and pursuit of that, is also time. Is there psychological time at all? Being violent, to become non-violent - that requires time. The pursuit of an ideal requires time. One has the fallacy that one will evolve into something totally different from `what is'. All this implies time. So we must together understand, not verbally, the feeling of time, the sense of time.

So where there is division, there must be conflict. If I am separate psychologically from my wife, there is bound to be conflict. So time, evolution, the sense of the opposite, are the factors of violence. These are the other factors. All these factors are `me'. And `me' in essence is the cause of conflict. If I ask how am I to be free of `me', it is a wrong question, but observe the whole movement of conflict, not try to understand, but just observe, like you observe the marvellous movement of the skies, the ocean. Then it tells you all its content without your analysing. So a brain that is in conflict mechanically, psychologically, must inevitably bring about disorder in itself and so outwardly. Is it possible for human beings to be totally, completely, free of it? When there is that freedom, there is order, there is love, compassion, and that compassion is intelligence.

We have to enquire into what it is to observe. How do you observe yourself what you are, in the mirror of relationship? What does it mean to observe? This is really another important thing one has to find out. What does it mean to look? When you look at a tree, which is the most beautiful thing on the earth, one of the most lovely things on the earth, how do you look at it? Do you ever look at it, do you ever look at the new moon - the shape of the new moon, so delicate, so fresh, so young; have you ever looked at it? Can you look at it without using the word `moon'? Are you really interested in all this? I will go on like a river that goes on. You are sitting on the banks of the river looking at the river, but you don't become the river ever because you never take part of the river, you never join the beauty of the movement that has no beginning and no end. So please consider what it is to observe. When you observe a tree, or a moon, something outside you, you always use the word - the tree, the moon; can you look at that moon, the tree, without naming it, without using the word to identify? Can you look without the word, without the content of the word, without identifying the word with the tree or the thing? Now, can you look at your wife, at your husband, at your children, without the word `my wife', without an image? Have you ever tried it? When you observe without a word, without a name, without the form you have created about her or him, in that observation there is no centre from which you observe. Then find out what happens. The word is thought. Thought is born out of memory. So you have the memory, the word, the thought, the image interfering between you and the other. Right? But here is no thought, thought in the sense, the word, the content of the word, the significance of the word to look, to observe. Then, in that observation, there is no centre as `me' looking at `you'. Then only there is a right relationship with another. In that, there is a quality of learning, a quality of certain beauty, certain sensitivity.

love is not thought. love is not desire, love is not pleasure, love is not the movement of images, and as long as you have images about another, there is no love. And we ask, is it possible to live a life without a single image? Then you have a relationship with each other. As it is, it is like two parallel lines never meeting, except sexually. A man goes off to the office, ambitious, greedy, envious, trying to achieve a position in the business world, in the religious world, in the professional world, and the modern lady also goes off to the office, and they meet in their house to breed children. And then the whole problem of responsibility, problem of education, of total indifference, comes. It does not matter then what your children are, what happens to them. You want them to be like you - safely married, with a house, a job, etc. Right? This is our life, daily life, and it is really a sorrowful life. So, if one asks why human beings live by images - all your gods are images, the Christian god, the Muslim god and your god - you will see that they are created by thought, and thought is uncertain, fearful. There is no security in the things that thought has put together. Is it possible then to be free from our conditioning in our relationship? That is, to observe in the mirror of relationship attentively, closely, persistently, what our reactions are, whether they are mechanical, habitual, traditional. In that mirror you discover actually what you are. So, relationship is extraordinarily important.

What is attachment? Why do we have such tremendous need for attachment? What are the implications of attachment? Why is one attached? When you are attached to anything, there is always fear in it, fear of losing it. There is always a sense of insecurity. Please observe it for yourself. There is always a sense of separation. I am attached to my wife. I am attached to her because she gives me pleasure sexually, gives me pleasure as a companion; you know all this, without my telling you. So, I am attached to her, which means I am jealous, frightened. Where there is jealousy, there is hatred. And is attachment love? That is one point to note in our relationship.

Relationship is the mirror in which we see ourselves as we are. All life is a movement in relationship. There is no living thing on earth which is not related to something or other. Even the hermit, a man who goes off to a lonely spot, is related to the past, is related to those who are around him. There is no escape from relationship. In that relationship which is the mirror in which we can see ourselves, we can discover what we are, our reactions, our prejudices, our fears, depression, anxieties, loneliness, sorrow, pain, grief. We can also discover whether we love or there is no such thing as love. So, we will examine this question of relationship because that is the basis of love. That is the only thing we have now with each other. If you cannot find the right relationship, if you live your own particular narrow life apart from wife, husband, and so on, that isolated existence brings about its own destruction.

Until there is freedom from conditioning, freedom from the activities of thought which is creating great problems, those problems cannot possibly be solved. A new instrument is necessary to solve our human problems, and we are going to talk as we go along about it, but it is not for the speaker to tell you what the new quality of that instrument is; each one has to find for himself. That is why both of us must think together, if we can. That demands that both of us feel, enquire, search out, question, doubt, all these things that man has put together, all the things that we have created as barriers between each other. We as human beings living on this beautiful earth which is slowly being destroyed, living on this earth which is our earth - not the Indian earth or the British earth or the American earth - have to live intelligently, happily; but apparently, that is not possible because we are conditioned. This conditioning is like a computer: we are programmed. We are programmed to be Hindus, to be Muslims, to be Christians, Catholics, Protestants. For 2000 years the Christian world has been programmed and the brain has been conditioned through that programme, like the computer. So our brains are deeply conditioned and we are asking if it is at all possible to be free of that conditioning. Unless we are totally, completely, free of that limitation, mere enquiry or asking what is the new instrument which is not thought, has no meaning. 5 First, one must begin very near to go very far. We want to go so far without taking the first step, and perhaps the first step may be that last step. Are we understanding each other, are we communicating with each other, or am I talking to myself? If I am talking to myself, I can do this in my own room. But if we are talking, having a conversation together, that conversation has significance when both of us meet at the same level, with the same intensity, at the same time. That is love. That is the real, deep friendship. To me this is not a lecture in the ordinary sense of the word. We are together trying to enquire and resolve human problems. That requires a great deal of enquiry because human problems are very, very complex. One must have the quality of patience, which is not of time. We are all impatient to get on - `tell me quickly something or other' - but if you have patience, that is, if you are not trying to achieve something, to arrive at some end, some goal, then enquire step by step into it.

Many volumes have been written about the world outside of us - the environment, the society, politics, economics, and so on, but very few have gone to the very length of discovering what we actually are. Why human beings are behaving as they are doing - killing each other, constantly in trouble, following some authority or the other, some book, some person, some ideal, and having no right relationship with their friends, with their wives, with their husbands and with their children; why human beings have become, after so many millennia, so vulgar, so brutal, so utterly lacking in care, consideration, attention to others, and denying the whole process of what is considered love. Outwardly, man has lived with wars for thousands and thousands of years. We are now trying to stop nuclear war but we will never stop wars. There has been no demonstration throughout the world to stop wars, but there are demonstrations against particular wars, and these wars have been going on - people being exploited, oppressed and the oppressor becoming the oppressed. This is the cycle of human existence with sorrow, loneliness, a great sense of depression, the mounting anxiety, the utter lack of security. There is no relationship with society or with one's own intimate persons, a relationship in which there is no row, no conflict, quarrels, oppression, and so on. This is the world we live in, which I am sure you all know.

So, a mind that is enquiring into something requires great sensitivity, freedom; that demands a brain that is stable, not wobbly, sloppy. I do not know if you have noticed how our minds are sloppy. We go from one guru to another, specially in this country. We tolerate anything - the dirt, the squalor, the corruption, the tradition that is dead, and all the temple buildings which are absolutely meaningless, spreading all over the world. You watch all this and you observe all this, and a mind, a brain, that is enquiring must be extraordinarily free, have great sensitivity. I don't know if you have not noticed how limited our senses are; senses, which is, the observing optically, visually, hearing - to hear another so completely that you understand immediately what is being said, to have sympathy, empathy, the feeling of cooperation, feeling of affection, feeling of love. We have not got it here. But you love god, you love going to a temple, putting on ashes, belonging to some tribal god, because you are frightened, and where there is fear, there is no freedom of enquiry.

So, we must together examine very carefully what is the source of thought, why thought has created such havoc in the world, whether thought can ever have as its companion love, or is love entirely different from the activities of thought. Is it possible to examine without any sense of authority, without any sense of belonging to any group, and go beyond the present confusion and chaos? Please listen; do not agree. but listen to find out. We have to be both the teacher and the disciple. The meaning of that word `disciple' is he who learns. Also we must be the teacher. The very act of learning gives us the responsibility to teach. So, we are going together to learn, not hold on to our own traditions, to our own opinions and conclusions; then that prevents us from learning, not from the speaker, but learning through observation, learning through the investigation of the nature of thought and the nature of the brain - not the physiological brain but the activities of a brain that is conditioned. So, first of all, we are going to examine together why the brain, which has evolved through thousands of years, which has gone through every kind of incident, accident, has become so limited. It is not limited in the technological world at all. It is moving with extraordinary rapidity. So, in one direction, in the direction of technology, the brain has infinite scope. The brain has put man on the moon, invented terrible things to kill human beings. Also technology has given man great comfort, hygiene, communication, and so on. But the brain is limited because it cannot go in any other direction but that direction. it is incapable at present to go inward, and if it can go in one direction, the outward direction, with such extraordinary vigour, extraordinary energy, then it can also go in the other direction, in the world of the psyche, the psychological world.

Let us talk together like two human beings, as friends, not imposing any ideas on each other, any dogmatic argumentative conclusions; as two friends who have known each other for some time, sitting under a lovely tree in a cool climate and looking at the world. What is the world? What is it that is happening out there? Who has created it? Why has man become what he is, thoughtless, careless, indifferent, without any love, brutal, violent? Why have we become like this? You might blame our inheritance, you might blame our environment, our culture or society. But who has created this society? Each one of us, the past generation and the present generation, is contributing to it. We have created this world, and there is no escape from that fact. Each one of us has contributed to that chaos, to the mess, the disorder, the anarchy that is going on.

Thought has divided the world into nationalities, and nationalities are one of the causes of war. Nationality, devised by thought in its search for security, has divided the world into the British, the French, the Muslim, Pakistani, Russian, and so on, and thought has created war through this division and the preparations of war for killing other human beings; thought has been responsible for this. In its search to be safe, secure, to find somewhere or other a sense of safety, it begins with the family, community, then a larger group and a wider group, hoping thereby to find some kind of safety, protection, security. It begins with a small group and ends up in nationalities. All the governments are supporting this crazy system of dividing people into nationalities, into groups - as the Hindus and the Muslims, the Chinese and the Russians, the Americans and the British and the French, and so on. Thought has been responsible for the division of religions - the Christian, the Buddhist, the Hindu, the Muslim, and so on. Thought has created the marvellous cathedrals, the great mosques and the lovely temples. Thought has put in these temples, mosques and churches the things that are invented by thought: the rituals, the dogmas, all the ceremonies, etc. Thought has also been responsible for the extraordinary development of techniques. Very few of us know actually what is going on in the technological world; the terrible things they are doing biologically, inventing great instruments of destruction of man - this is the vast unlimited movement of technology; and also thought has organized mass killings in the name of peace, in the name of the country, in the name of god. So, there is a great conflict going on, for which thought is responsible. Thought has brought about great hygienic benefits, communications, rapid transport, and all that. The brain is infinitely capable, and that capacity, that energy of thought has created this world of technology with all the problems it involves - social and environmental; and thought also has created havoc in our daily life, in our relationship with each other, between man and woman. We are saying that thought is responsible for all the miseries it has brought about in the world. Thought has also done great things to humanity. Please do not deny or accept what the speaker is saying. He is putting this forward for you to examine, to question, to doubt, not to accept nor to agree.

We ought to talk over together what is religion, what is a religious life, what is a religious mind. We are going to enquire together what is a religious life, what is meditation, and if there is anything that has not been touched by thought. Do you call the present religions all throughout the world as religious? You are a Hindu, you believe, your religion says this and that, you worship an idol; the Muslim does not, but he has his own form of worship. The Christian has his symbol - the rituals, the dogmas, the beliefs, the superstitions, all that. The hierarchical structure of a religious society, you call all that religion. Your belief is god. Unless you believe in god or some supreme principle, it is considered that you are not religious. We say to ourselves, `There must be something more, something which is protecting, which is giving, which is creating.' Thought creates the idea, based on books, tradition, being programmed to believe in god. That surely is not religion. Do you agree with that? Of course not. But that is not religion: your belief, your worship, going to the temple, to the mosque, to the church, repeating some phrases utterly divorced from daily life. To understand the daily life, to bring about a radical change in that life, to have a brain that is not superstitious - that is actually facing facts, facing what one is and going beyond `what is'. That is the beginning of what is a religious mind. To understand the whole meaning of daily living, which is the understanding of the relationship with each other, to love, to have that quality of love, to have that perfume. that beauty, that flame, that is religion. That is the religious mind, To live a life that has no conflict, that has the sense of compassion with love, with intelligence, that is a religious life. Compassion is intelligence. That is the religious life. But that is not enough. We have to understand much deeper things, which is what is meditation.

Also we should discuss the nature of intelligence. Compassion has its own intelligence, love has its own intelligence. We are going to enquire into what is intelligence. Surely, it cannot be bought in books. Knowledge is not intelligence. Where there is love, compassion, it has the beauty of its own intelligence. Compassion cannot exist if you are a Hindu, or a Catholic, Protestant or a Buddhist, or a Marxist. love is not the product of thought. In understanding the nature of love, compassion, which is to deny all that which is not, to see that which is false as false, is the beginning of intelligence. To see the truth in the false is the beginning of intelligence. To see the nature of disorder and end it, not carry on day after day but to end it - the ending is the immediate perception which is intelligence.

We are enquiring into what is intelligence. Cleverness is not intelligence. Having a great deal of knowledge about various subjects - mathematics, history, science, poetry, painting - that is not the activity of intelligence. The investigator into the atom may have an extraordinary capacity of concentration, imagination, probing, questioning, formulating hypothesis after hypothesis, theory, after theory, but all that is not intelligence. Intelligence is the activity of the wholeness of life, and that intelligence is not yours or mine. It does not belong to any country or to any people, like love is not Christian love or Hindu love, and so on. So, please enquire into all this because our life depends on all this. We are unfortunate miserable people, always in travail, always in conflict. We have accepted it as the way of life. But in enquiring into all this, there is awakening of that intelligence, and when that intelligence is in operation, in action, there is only right action.

You are all attached to something or the other. If I may suggest, most respectfully, become aware of the consequences of that attachment. If you are attached to an ideal, you are always on the defensive, or aggressive. If you come to a conclusion, to hold on to that conclusion is to end all further enquiry. Where there is attachment, there must be pain. I am attached to my wife and she may run away, she may look at another man, or she may die. In attachment, there is always fear, there is always anxiety, suspicion, watching. Surely, that is not love. So, can one be totally free of all attachment? It is up to you, but when you are attached, there is no love. Because, in that attachment there is fear. Fear is not love. And the ambitious man who wants to climb the ladder of success has no love because he is concerned with himself, with his achievements, which is the gathering of power, position, prestige. How can such a man love another? He may have a family, children, but in that man there is no love. When you say, `I love god as the highest principle', is that also love? That god, that principle, the highest principle `Brahman', is the result of thought. God is invented by man. I am sure you won't like this. But you are attached to that concept: god exists. Then you ask who is the creator of all this misery. God hasn't created all this, has he? If he has, he must be an odd god, he must be a sadist god. All the gods in the world are invented by thought, and to find out what love is, there must be an end to sorrow, end to attachment, end to everything we are committed to inwardly. Where the self, the ego, the me is, love is not. You hear all this, and you will walk away from here with the same attachment, with the same convictions, and never enquire further because the more you enquire about all this, the more life becomes dangerous. Because you may have to give up a lot of things naturally, easily, not as self-sacrifice. You have to understand the nature of attachment and be free from it. You have to realize that when you see the truth of something, you are standing completely alone, and that you may perceive that, and of that you are frightened. You may believe, see the truth inwardly of the nature of attachment, but as you don't want to quarrel with your wife, or husband, you accept. Gradually you become hypocrites.

We also have to talk over together what is love. What does that word mean to you? If you are asked in a drawing room what is the meaning of that word to you, what would you answer? What do you mean by that? I love playing golf, I love to read, I love my wife, I love god. Is that love? Do you love your wife? Do you love your husband? Do you love your friend? We are enquiring into what is love. This is very important to enquire because without love, life is empty. You may have all the riches of the earth, you may be a great banker, great scientist, mathematician, great technician, capable of great technology, but without love you are lost, an empty shell. Together we are going to find not what love is, but what is not love. That is, through negation come to the positive. Is jealousy love, jealousy in which there is attachment, anxiety? In jealousy there is hate. Is that love? You are attached to your family, you are attached to a person or an idea or a concept or a conclusion. What are the implications of your attachment? Suppose I am married, I am attached to my wife. What does it mean? Where there is attachment, there is fear. Where there is attachment, there is possessiveness. When there is attachment to an ideal, to a concept, to a belief, or to a person with all the consequences of jealousy, anger, hatred, suspicion, surely all that is not love. To understand the nature of love, is it possible to be totally free from attachment? Please ask this question of yourself.

We ought to talk over together sorrow, whether there is an end to sorrow. When there is an end to sorrow, then only there is love, then only there is compassion. What is sorrow, grief, pain, a feeling of loneliness, the sense of isolation? What is the nature of sorrow? What is the cause of sorrow. which is pain, fear, a sense of desperate loneliness? Why have human beings, from time immemorial, suffered and are still suffering, not from physical pain, some fatal disease or a feeling of utter rejection, but from the nature of suffering inwardly - the pain, the fears and the escape from it? I wonder if we have realized that for the last thousand years there have been many wars, and how many people have cried, mothers have shed tears! The pain, the anxiety, the hope, all that constitute sorrow, and this sorrow exists in all the days of our life, and we never seem to be free of it, completely ending that sorrow.

What is the good? According to the dictionary, the common usage of that word means good behaviour, good in the sense of being whole, not fragmented but having that sense or understanding of the nature of the wholeness of life, and in that there is no fragmentation as the evil. But if evil is the outcome of the good, then that evil has a relationship with the good. We are enquiring together if there is an opposite in our life, if there is hate and love. Can love have a relationship with hate, with jealousy? If hate has a relationship with love, then it is not love. Obviously. If I hate someone, and at the same time talk about love, it is incompatible. The two don't meet. We are questioning, is there an opposite at all? Where there is an opposite, there must be conflict. I hate, and also I think I love him. The opposite of hate is not love. The opposite of hate is still hate.

We ought to talk over together this evening why human beings who have lived for over four thousand years, are behaving as they are, what has happened to them, what has happened to each one of us that we don't lead an orderly, sane, balanced life. We have created this society which is immoral, unethical, corrupt, destructive. Each one of us has contributed to it, and if there is to be a radical change in the social structure, we have to begin with ourselves, not with politics, not with Marxism or some kind of retreat from the present. We have to put order in our house first. We are disorderly, violent, confused, lonely. So we are going to talk over this evening what is total order, if there is any kind of love, what is compassion, whether sorrow can ever end, the sorrow of human beings right throughout the world.

Why is there conflict between two human beings, whether they are highly educated or not at all educated? They may be great scientists, but they are ordinary human beings, like you and another - fighting, quarrelling, ambitious. Why does this state exist? Is it not because each person is concerned about himself? So he is isolating himself. In isolation you cannot have right relationship. You hear this, but you will not do anything about it because we fall into a habit, into a rut, into a groove, into a narrow little life, and we put up with it, however miserable, unhappy, quarrelsome, ugly, it is. So, please enquire, question, doubt, whether it is possible to live with another with complete harmony without any dissension, without any division. If you really, deeply, enquire, you will find that you have created an image about your wife, and she has created an image about you. Each has built an image about the other, a picture about the other. These two pictures, images, words, are in relationship with each other. Where there is an image about another, a picture about another, there must be conflict. I am sure you all have an image about the speaker. I am quite sure of it. Why? You don't know the speaker. You can never know the speaker, but you have created an image about him: that he is religious, non-religious, he is stupid, he is very clever, he is beautiful, he is this, he is that. And with that image you look at the person. The image is not the person. The image is the reputation, and reputations are easily created; the reputation may be good or bad. But the human brain, the thought, creates the image. The image is the conclusion, and we live by images and imagination. The making of pictures has no place in love. We don't love each other; we may hold hands, we may sleep together, we may do this and ten different things, but we have no love for each other. If you had that quality, that perfume of love, there would be no wars. There will be no Hindu and Muslim, Jew and Arab. But you listen to all this and you still remain with your images. You still wrangle with each other, quarrel with each other. Your life has become so extraordinarily meaningless.

We are investigating together and we see that human consciousness is similar, is shared by all human beings. Therefore, there is no individual. He may be more educated than you, he may be taller, he may be shorter; outside he may be different, but inwardly he shares the ground of all humanity. This is a fact. But if you are frightened, if you are caught in the conditioning of being an individual, you will never understand the immensity and the extraordinary fact that you are the entire humanity. From that there is love, compassion, intelligence, but if you are merely conditioned to the idea that you are an individual, then you have endless complications because it is based on illusion, not on fact. The illusion may be of thousands of years, but it is still illusion. You are the result of your environment, you are the result of the language you speak, you are the result of the food you eat, the clothes, the climate, the tradition handed down from generation to generation - you are all that. You are the product of the society which you have created. Society is not different from you. Man has created the society, the society of greed, envy, hatred, brutality, violence, wars; he has created all that and he has also created the extraordinary world of technology. So, you are the world and the world is you. Your consciousness is not yours, it is the ground on which all human beings stand, all human beings think. So, you are actually not an individual. That is one of the realities, truth that one must understand.

First, we must enquire what is relationship. Why is there, in human relationship with each other, such conflict, such misery, such intense sense of loneliness? From past history, from all the knowledge that has been acquired, studied, man has lived in conflict with each other. But relationship is existence: without relationship you cannot exist. In that existence there is conflict. Relationship is absolutely necessary. Life is relationship, action is relationship; what you think brings about relationship or destroys relationship. The hermit, the monk, the sannyasi - he may think he is separate, but he is related - related to the past, related to the environment, related to the man who brings him some grains, some food, some clothes. So life is relationship. We are going to explore together why human beings live in conflict with each other, why there is conflict between you and your husband, between the wife and the man. Because, where there is conflict in relationship, there is no love, there is no compassion, and there is no intelligence. Are you actually related? You may be related to a man, woman, sexually, but apart from that, are you related to anybody? Relation means non-isolation. That is, the man goes to the office every day of his life, to a factory, to some form of occupation, leaving the house at 8 o'clock, spends the whole day working, for 50, 60 years, and then dies. And there the man is ambitious, greedy, envious, struggling, competing; he comes home and the woman, the wife, is also competitive, jealous, anxious, going on in her own way. They may meet sexually, talk together, care somewhat, but they remain separate, like two railway lines never meeting. This is what we call relationship, which is an actuality. This is a fact of everyone's life, the perpetual division between two people, each holding on to his opinions, to his conclusions. The fact is, however intimate that relationship may be, there is always conflict, one dominating the other, one possessing the other, one jealous of the other. This is what we call relationship. Now, can that relationship which we know, be totally changed? Ask yourself this.

Also now we ought to talk over together religion and meditation. What is religion? What is religion for most of you? - beliefs, rituals. If you are a Christian, you believe in a saviour, in a particular saviour, with all the rituals, with all the marvellous, beautiful architecture inside the churches, the great cathedrals. Have you seen a cathedral performing a mass? It is a great sight, with great beauty, with utter precision, to impress the poor people who believe and do all the rituals, puja, daily, and above all believe in god. That is what you call religion, which has absolutely nothing whatever to do with your daily life. All religions, organized or unorganised, have said, `Don't kill, love someone.' But you go on killing, you go on worshipping false gods which is your nationalism, your tribalism. So you are killing each other. That is what you all call religion. To find out the nature of a religious mind, you must put away all those childish things. Will you? Of course not. You will go on doing your puja, your ceremonies, become slaves to the priests. Religion has become a form of entertainment. Can you put away all that and not belong to any religion, neither be a Christian, Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim? Leave all that; that is a propaganda of centuries. Like a computer, you are being programmed. When you say, `I am a Hindu', you have been programmed for the last 5,000 years. When you are enquiring into the nature of religion, you must be free from all this. Will you? When there is freedom from all that is false, illusory, then you begin to enquire into what is meditation; not before. A mind in conflict, a brain in struggle, cannot possibly meditate. You may sit down for 20 minutes every day, but if the brain is in conflict, pain, anxiety, loneliness, sorrow, what is the value of your meditation? We are going to enquire into what is the meditation, not how to meditate. You have asked, `Tell me how to meditate', which is to give you a system, a method, a practice. Do you know what practising every day does to your brain? Your brain becomes dull, mechanical, it is tortured, making effort to achieve some silence, some state of experience. That is not meditation. That is just another form of achievement like a politician becoming a minister. In your meditation, you want to achieve illumination, silence. It is the same pattern repeated; only, you call it religious and the other calls it political achievement. There is not much difference.

Also we ought to talk over together the question of death. Like love, hate, pain, sorrow and fear, death is part of our life. You may postpone it, you may say I have ten years more to live, but at the end of it there is death waiting. All humanity fears death or rationalizes it away saying that death is inevitable. To understand the depth and the full significance of that extraordinary incident which we call death, you must understand the nature of our own consciousness, the nature of what you are. If you do not understand what you are actually, not descriptively, then death becomes a dreadful thing.

We ought to ask, is love pleasure, is love desire, is love thought? Can love ever be cultivated? Without love, the sense of compassion, the flame of it, the intelligence of it, life has very little meaning. You may invent a purpose for life, perfection, you know all the rest of that business, but without this fundamental beauty of love, life has no meaning. Actually, your life, when you look at it, going to the office every day for the next 50 years, what does it all mean? - bringing little money, little power, breeding children, wrong kind of education and so perpetuating this incredible cruelty in the world. You may read all the books in the world, visit all the museums in the world, listen to talks like this from a different kind of speaker, but if there is not this quality, that extraordinary sense of beauty with its great sensitivity, life has very little meaning. Without this you become more and more mischievous, more and more chaotic in the world. Do you love anybody? Does that love contain jealousy, possessiveness, domination, attachment? Then that is not love. It is just a form of pleasure, entertainment. Where there is sorrow, there cannot be love, and therefore no intelligence. love has its own intelligence. Compassion has its quality of this pure, unadulterated intelligence.

Now, after saying all this about sorrow, looking at it, when my son dies, I realize how I am attached to him, that I have lost him for ever and remain with that sorrow. Do you understand this? It is like a flower. It blooms, it opens up, and it withers away. It dies at the end of the day. It may die at the end of the week, but it withers away. You must give it an opportunity to flower - the flowering of sorrow and the ending of sorrow. Then you have passion, vitality, energy, drive. Where there is sorrow, there can be no love. A mind, a brain, that is in agony, that is lonely, self-centred, how can it love? love is not emotional, love is not sentiment, romantic, fanciful, comforting thing. It is tremendously vital, as strong as death. When there is sorrow, love is not. Most human beings in the world suffer and never resolve the problems of suffering. So they do not know what it is to love. We have now reduced love to pleasure, sexual attachment and so on, to various forms of pleasure.

You don't love anybody. If you love somebody, then this country would not be in chaos as it is; and there won't be wars if we love people. Your books, your rituals, your japas have no meaning whatsoever because you have lost the most precious thing in life. You probably never had it: to love without jealousy, without possession. love is not attachment. If all of us under this tent, if we all love, then there will be a different India tomorrow. You are all so verbal, you just use words, but find out why your life is empty, shallow, why you have no love, why there is no compassion, why you are a Hindu, a Sikh, and a Muslim. You have never asked these questions, sirs. Meditation is to ask these questions. Meditation is to find out the reality of these questions and the truth that lies behind these questions.

So, what is suffering; can it end? And if there is suffering, can there be love? Human beings throughout the world have suffered incredibly. The last two world wars and the previous 5,000 years in which there have been wars, practically every year, man, woman has shed innumerable tears. Man has suffered and is going on suffering. The poor in this country suffer. There is disease, pain, and the anguish of human existence. Life is not pleasant; life is a turmoil, agony. One becomes more and more aware of all this. One begins to see very clearly that all human beings bear the same burden, share the same sorrow; not a particular sorrow, not the sorrow of one's son dying or brother dying, or the wife or the husband leaving, but the sorrow which man has accumulated for thousands of years. Your sorrow is the sorrow of mankind, the sorrow of all human beings, whether you live in Russia or China or in this unfortunate country.

Do you see the beauty of the flower, of the mountain, of a full moon on a leaf, the lights of silver on a piece of rock? Sir, what is beauty, not in a painting, but beauty in our life? What is the nature of sorrow, the ending of that burden, puffing away of sorrow? If you suffer pain, anxiety, ambition, and so on, you don't know what love is. You want to be ambitious, you want to have power, position, better house, better cars. Have you ever understood that a man who is ambitious has no love in his heart? And we are all very ambitious to achieve nirvana or to become a bank manager. To reach nirvana or moksha is the same thing as becoming manager of a bank because both are ambitions. To live a life of intelligence means no ambition but to be tremendously active. Sir, we have to talk over together the ending of sorrow, and what are the implications of death, and what is religion. Without religion you cannot create a new structure, a new society. What we have as religion is utter nonsense, meaningless. We have to enquire into the depth of that word. Because, only a new culture, a new civilization, can be born out of true religion, not all that paraphernalia that goes on in the name of religion. Religion is something entirely different. To have a religious life means to have compassion, love; it means the ending of sorrow, to find right relationship with each other. What most people want is not to be disturbed. They want to continue with their own particular pattern of life. So, please consider, give your energy, your capacity, to find out whether there is a different way of living on this earth.

Do you know what it means to love another? Have you ever loved anybody? Is love dependence? Is love desire? Is love pleasure? I don't love my wife; she doesn't love me. We are two separate individuals. We may meet sexually, otherwise we carry on in our own particular way. Do you understand, sirs? Does love exist in this country? Don't ask, `Does it exist in Europe?' When the speaker is in Europe, he talks about it there. But we are talking about it here as we are in this country, in this part of the world. Is there love in this country? Do you love anybody? Can love exist with fear, when each one is becoming something? Can love exist when I am becoming a saint and she is not, or she is becoming a saint and I am not, when each one is becoming? Please understand all this. It is your life. When each one is becoming something, how can there be love? Is it possible to love another without wanting a single thing from another, either emotionally, physically, in any way, not ask my wife for anything? Psychologically, she may care for my need, for I may bring money. I am not talking about that. But inwardly, love cannot exist where there is attachment. If you are attached to your guru, there is no love in your heart. This is very, very serious. Without love, there is no right action. We talk about action. We do so many kinds of social work. But when there is love in your heart, in your eyes, in your blood, in your face, you are a different human being. Whatever you do then has beauty, has grace, is a right action. All this may be excellent words you hear. But will you have this quality? It cannot be cultivated, it cannot be practised, it cannot be bought from your guru, from anywhere. But without that, you are dead human beings. So what will you do? Please do ask this question, find out for yourself why this flame does not exist, why you have become such paupers. Unless you put your house in order, your house, which is yourselves, there will be no order in the world. You may meditate for the rest of your life; but without that, your meditation has no meaning. So, please, most respectfully we are asking, what is your response?

We should also talk over together, relationship. Why is it that in our relationship with each other, however intimate, sexual, however close, there is conflict? Why cannot two people live peacefully? Have you ever asked that question? Because this is very important. If I don't know how to live peacefully with my wife, with my husband, with my girl friend, I cannot live peacefully in the world. I may talk about peace, I may write a great deal about peace, go all over the world talking about peace, but I am quarrelling with my wife, or with my husband. So there is conflict in our relationship. Why? Do you want me to tell you or are you enquiring with the speaker? If you are really enquiring, it is a sharing, a moving together, not agreeing together, but thinking step by step, going together, like walking hand in hand on the lane where there is so much beauty, love and affection. Why is there this dissension, this division between man and man, woman and man, in our relationship? Have you noticed it? We are like two parallel lines, never meeting. We never say what we mean and stick to what we mean. We are going to find out together why in human relationship we have such desperate, ugly conflicts. I have my ambition, my desires, my problems. In my office, I am competitive, aggressive. I am pursuing my own direction and the wife is also pursuing her own ambition, and I dominate, which she resists. So we are asking why there is this conflict, because we two have to live together. We have sex, we have children, but we two are separate. Isn't it a fact? I dominate her or she dominates me, she bullies me, or I bully her. I scold her or she scolds me. I don't beat her but I am angry with her. I would like to beat her, but I am a little more controlled. You laugh; but these are all facts. But I am an individual, she is an individual. Each must have his own way - in habits, in desires. Then, how can two people live together? Which means, you have no love at all for your wife or your husband.

What do you mean by impersonal? You see we have concepts. What do you mean by person - word, name, form? Are you an individual to call yourself personal and then ask, `Can I be impersonal?' Are you an individual? You all think you are individuals. Your whole tradition, religions, tell you that you are an individual. Are you? Are you not the result of centuries of human endeavour? You don't want to question all those things. You are afraid. If you are not an individual, what would happen to you? Individuality is a form of isolation and, therefore, we are all at each other's throat all our life. We have no love for each other. We talk about love of god, but we do not love each other. And besides, god is the invention of man. I know you all believe in god, but you have invented that entity. If god does exist, and if he has created us, what a miserable god he must be. You don't want to look at it that way. You worship an illusion and you like the illusion and think that in illusion there is security. And you are finding out there is no security in illusion. Your god has betrayed you and yet you worship him - the Christian god, the Hindu god, the Muslim god. It is all so absurd and childish.

We have, as two friends, gone into the question of relationship, and we will enquire further into the nature of that relationship. Is the human brain your brain, or is it the brain of mankind? This is really a very serious question. Is your brain an individual brain or the brain of humanity? When you say it is my brain, when you say it is my consciousness, is it so? Or is it the consciousness of mankind? Enquire into it. You suffer, you are uncertain, you are anxious, you are in agony, pain. That is what you are. You have belief, knowledge, character, and that is what you are. And that is exactly what your neighbour is. He is suffering, he goes through agony, sorrow, pain, trouble. So, is your consciousness separate from the rest of mankind? No, of course not. If you admit that, if you see the truth of that, then are you an individual? You may think you are an individual because you are dark, you are short, because peripheral activity makes you think you are an individual, but deeply, are you not the rest of mankind? When you realize that, the truth of that, you will never kill another, because you are killing yourself. Then out of that comes great compassion, love.

Where there is conditioning, there is no freedom. There cannot be love, there cannot be affection. It is imperative, absolutely essential for the future of humanity that we are concerned with the brain which is conditioned. If one is aware of that, then we can proceed to ask whether it is possible to free the brain. The relationship between the brain and the mind can come, is understood, when the brain is completely free. Then the brain is the mind. We will go into that later as we go along.