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.

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.

We must understand what is perception, how to look. Is the observer who looks at all this - the poverty, the loneliness, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the suffering - different from all that or is the observer all that? I will explain this. We have separated the `me', who is the observer, from that which he is observing. I say I am suffering and I say to myself that suffering must end, and to end it, I must suppress it, I must escape from it, I must follow a certain system. So, I am different from fear, from pleasure, from pain, sorrow. Are you different from all that? Or you may think that there is something in you which is totally different from all that. If you think that, it is part of your thought, and therefore there is nothing sacred there. So, is the observer different from the observed? When you are angry, envious, brutal, violent, are you not all that? The meditator is the meditation. Please sir, think about it. The observer is the observed. See the importance of this. Before, we have divided the observer from the observed. That means there is a division between that and the other. So, there was conflict. You could then control it, suppress it, fight it, but if you are that, if you are sorrow, if you are fear, if you are pleasure, you are the conglomeration of all this. To realize that fact is a tremendous reality; therefore, there is no division, and therefore there is no conflict; the observer is the observed.

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, time is a great factor in our life. There is time by the watch, the chronological time and the time to learn a language, a skill, a time to achieve in this world - become from a clerk to the executive person, and so on. There is time in that direction. Is there time psychologically, that is, inwardly? Is there time which means a progress from here to there, in the sense of becoming more noble, more free of greed, anger, violence? Time is evolution. From the seed to a tree, from a baby to manhood, the growth, the becoming, all that implies time. Time has evolution. Now we are going to question together whether there is psychological evolution at all. This is important because time and thought are the root of fear. Fear cannot end or fade away or dissipate if you don't understand the nature of time and the nature of thought which are the roots of all fear. We are examining together the nature of time. There is physical time, the new moon becoming the full moon, the seed growing into a great gigantic tree. Time is necessary to learn a language, a skill; time is necessary to accumulate knowledge. You may learn a language within a week or six months. To go from here to your house takes time; from one point to another. All physical movement, physical activity, learning, requires time. The psyche, that is, the bundle of all your thinking, of all your feelings, of all your conclusions, beliefs, gods, hope, fear, all that is a bundle, that is your consciousness, that is what you are. That is what your consciousness is. Your consciousness is made of all these things - your gods, your knowledge, your faith, your hope, your fears, your pleasures, your conclusions, your loneliness and the great fear of sorrow, pain. We are asking whether that consciousness has evolution at all.

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.

So, is thinking the root of all this misery, this destruction, this decline, this corruption, this decay? If it is, then can that movement of thought which has created such havoc in the world, end? It is thinking which has created the most extraordinary technological world, great instruments of war, extraordinary submarines, and so on. Also it has created all the religions in the world. It has built extraordinary cathedrals, mosques, temples and all the things that are in the temples, in the mosques, in the churches. Thought has invented all the rituals, invented the saviour in the Christian world, invented liberation or moksha or whatever you like to call it in this country. Also it has invented gods. The more you are uncertain, the more dangerous the world becomes. So thought must find a security, the sense of safety, certainty. And it creates gods - your god and my god, my god is better than your god, my guru is better than yours, and so on. Thought has been responsible for all this, If that is the cause, if thought is the cause of all this - our misery, our superstitions, our immense insecurity, uncertainty, and also thought has created the most extraordinary things - communications, surgery, medicines and so on, is there an end to it? You understand my question? Is there an end to thought? That is, if thought is responsible for all this technological world and the human world of misery, unhappiness, anxiety, if thought is the cause of all this, it must have an end. That is, if one has a certain disease brought about by various incidents, that disease has a cause, and that having been discovered, it can be treated and ended. Similarly, if thought is responsible for all this, for our daily confusion, misery, uncertainty, sorrow, and all these superstitions that thought has created around us, if thought is the cause, it has an end.

May we go into it together, not that I explain, you accept, but together, slowly, carefully, find out for ourselves what is the root of all this, what is the cause of all this? If we don't find it now, the future will be exactly the same, what you are now - wars, division, sorrow, pain, anxiety, uncertainty. So together let us find out what is the cause of this division. This division breeds wars, quarrels, perpetual conflict - conflict between man and woman, sexually, and so on. What is the root of all this, the cause of all this? If I may ask, how do you approach a question like that? How do you come near to it? Approach means to come near, to come into contact. This is a question put to you and are you looking at it as a problem to be resolved, or do you come even close to it? If you do, you are then open to the question, but if you keep away from the question, you are not open, you are not alive to the question.

What is our first issue in life, what is the first movement in our life, in the life of man? We are not talking about the petty little life which you lead, which we will come to presently, but the life that is around us, the vast, immense, complex movement of existence. What is it that strikes you first? What is it that has meaning, that has depth, that has a sense of vitality behind it? What would be your first observation, your first response, your first immediate enquiry? Perhaps you never ask this question. If you look at this vast extraordinary movement of life of which one is a part, what is the thing that you meet first? Would it be relationship, would it be your own particular concern about yourself, would it be your own fear, your own anxiety, your own particular, narrow, limited enquiry, your own search for god? What would be your first natural contact, natural demand? Don't we look at this vast movement of life from a narrow little window, that window being your own little self - your own worries, your own anxieties, your own sexual demands? Are you looking at this vast movement from no particular point of view, from no window, from no commitment, or are you so caught in a system, in a tradition, in knowing as a professor, as a philosopher, as a writer, as a soldier or as a specialist? Or do you look at it as a human being, the human being with so many questions, sorrows, pains, anxieties? How do you look at all this?

If one may like to point out, this is not a lecture to instruct on a particular subject or with a view to inform, not to instruct and teach, but we, you and the speaker, are searching out the various issues of our daily lives to see if there are any solutions for them. So it is your responsibility as well as that of the speaker to think together, for each of us to discover, find out for ourselves if we are meeting each other; not merely at the intellectual level or emotional, ideational level, but rather meet in a relationship that is enquiring, questioning. To question, enquire, one must be free of prejudices. Otherwise, enquiry has no value at all. Most of you are already committed to so many ideals, conclusions, opinions, and so we never meet. As the speaker has no beliefs, has no ideals, has no authority whatsoever, he can investigate easily, freely, happily, but if you also were free, you can also enquire, look into the vast conflicts of our society, of our governments, why human beings who have lived on this earth for perhaps forty, fifty thousand years or more have become what they are - dull, violent, superstitious. We are the society, we have created this society in which we live, and to bring about order in that society, our own house must be in order, which it is not. Our house, the house in which we live, is not the physical house, but it is the house of our struggle, conflict, misery, confusion, sorrow. That is our house, and we don't bring about order in that. Mere demand for outward order has little meaning.

So, what is sorrow? What is the nature of it? In that thing called sorrow, there is pain, there is grief, there is a sense of isolation, a sense of loneliness in which there is no relationship. It is not only a physical shock but a great crisis in consciousness, in the psyche. I have lost my son; I am only taking that example. I have lost my son to whom I am attached. I want him to grow up into some businessman, have some kind of good substantial income, a house, and so on, and suddenly he has gone. What is that quality of suddenness, something which has given me great joy, great pain, great anxiety, concern about his future? All that movement - my affection, my concern, my care, my sense of helping him to have good taste, to live aesthetically - suddenly ends. Don't you know all these feelings? In every house there is this shadow of sorrow. There is sudden ending of my attachment, sudden ending of all my hope which I have invested in him, sudden in the sense of a deep shock and life becomes empty; either I become very cynical or find a rational explanation or plunge myself into some form of entertainment - drugs, trips and all the rest of it, or believe in some future life. This is the lot of human beings.

Where there is an ending, there is a totally new beginning. But we never end. We end things if it is profitable or painful. Our life is based on reward and punishment, both outwardly and inwardly, but we never end anything without a cause. So, grief, loneliness, and sense of separation which is essentially time, identification, investment and all the things one has cultivated in another - all that ends and there is a shock and that shock I call sorrow. Now, can one remain with that, not escape, not seek comfort? Can you remain with that tremendous challenge without a single movement of thought, because sorrow is perhaps one of the greatest challenges, greatest demands on the human mind, on the human quality? And if you merely escape from it, run away, rationalize, then sorrow is your shadow, but with the ending of that, there is passion that is the very essence of energy. But very few of us have that passion. which is living, that passion which moves the universe.

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.

I hope together we, you and the speaker, are going into this. Together we are investigating, not the speaker investigates and you listen, agree or disagree, accept or deny, but together we are exploring a very, very profound problem of humanity. One requires an unemotional approach to understand sorrow; not sentimentality, not a conclusion that sorrow will end, or that sorrow will always remain with mankind. We must together consider this question deeply. You can only consider this question when the mind is in the heart. We use our intellect to comprehend, to discern, to argue. We use the intellect to choose, to measure. And intellect is one of the faculties of the brain. If we are going to examine this extraordinary, profound, problem, mere intellect has very little place, and most of us are highly intellectual, highly educated, having this extraordinary quality of analysis. You in India can analyse anything on earth. You have got fairly subtle minds, whereas to comprehend sorrow, mere intellect cannot go very far. We are saying that all of us have the capacity to use our intellect, which is to understand, to discern, to argue, to choose, to weigh one against the other. This is the function of the intellect. And most of us having the capacity - if you are merely approaching this question of sorrow that way - then our intellect, our mind, dominates the process of investigation. Therefore it distorts.

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.

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.

The moment there is the idea `I must not' or `I should, or, I will, away from `what is', then there must be conflict. Does one perceive this intellectually or actually - that there is no opposite psychologically, inwardly, but only `what is'? You deal with `what is', not `what should be'. I am violent, and this idea of non-violence is fictitious, is hypocritical. It has no value because, in becoming non-violent, I am sowing the seeds of violence all the time. So there is only violence. What is the nature and the structure of violence, not only to get angry, to hit somebody, to kill somebody, not only the killing of human beings but killing animals, killing nature? Violence is also imitation, conformity, trying to be something which you are not. Can one look at that violence with all the content of that word, not just physical anger or physical expression of that anger but to look at the whole content of that word and hold it, look at it, and not move away from it, neither suppress it nor escape from it nor transcend it but just look at it as you would look at a precious jewel? When you so look at it, are you looking at it as something separate from you or what you observe is what you are? This is important to understand. We are violent. That violence, we have said, is different from `me'. Therefore, I try to change it to become something else. That violence is me. I am not different from violence, greed or hate or jealousy. Suffering is me, but we have separated anger, jealousy, loneliness, sorrow, as something separate from me so that I can control it, shape it, run away from it; but if that is me, I can do nothing about it but just observe it. So the observer is the observed, the thinker is the thought, the experiencer is the experienced. The two are not separate.

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.

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.

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.

When there is great disturbance outwardly, uncertainty, insecurity, man turns back to tradition like the Muslim world is doing. They go back to the Koran, and in the Christian, Hindu world there are so many books that they cannot go back to the books, but they go back to tradition. We have now got tribal gods at every corner because the world has become uncertain, dangerous, and we are all doing the same. We want to belong to some group, some sect, some local god. Now, how does one enquire into the psychological world, that is, into the world of consciousness? The content of that consciousness is what you are. That is not a dogmatic statement. That is not a conclusion but is a fact. What you are, is the content of your consciousness. Your beliefs, your opinions, your experiences, your illusions, superstitions, your gods, your fear, your pleasure and the loneliness, the sorrow, and the great grief and the fear of death. That is what you are. That is, the content of your consciousness is what you are. You can divide that content of your consciousness into various parts, invent a super consciousness, but it is still the content of your consciousness. You can meditate, sit cross-legged, do all those things, but it is part of your consciousness. And the content of your consciousness is put together by thought. Please examine this situation. We are saying, the content of your consciousness is put together by thought, by thinking, the thinking that you are a Hindu or a Christian, Marxist, Maoist or whatever you want to think. Thought, which is limited, has brought about limitations in consciousness. It can expand consciousness by thinking that it can expand and experiment in expansion. But it is still the activity of thought.

What is meditation? Is it sitting in a certain posture, closing your eyes, repeating some phrases, some mantra? The word mantra means in Sanskrit, to ponder over, consider, not becoming. When you are not becoming, what are you? Also that word mantra means to resolve and put away self-centred activity. That is the real meaning of that word mantra. Now, look at what you have done with it. You repeat some words and call that mantra. As we said, a religious life is not becoming inwardly anything; we must go much deeper than that. Meditation is the ending of measurement. I will go into it. So what is meditation, not how to meditate. When you put the `how', when you use that word `how', that means, `give me a system, please tell me what to do, show me the path.' If you can remove that word `how' altogether from your mind, and then look at it, what is meditation? Systems, methods, practices, certain forms of discipline, breathing correctly, deeply, and so on, all that is not meditation. It is an exchange, a market place where the guru sells you something and you practise. We are going to see what meditation is. Meditation is not the practice of any system. Because, when you practise a system, your brain becomes atrophied, becomes dull. It is not alive, active. If you are really, deeply, concerned with meditation, then there is no system, no method. Practising every day, sitting half an hour quietly, is not meditation. Can you deny all that intelligently because you see the absurdity of practising a method, as it brings up a routine? Whereas in meditation, there must be freedom - freedom from fear, freedom from envy, greed, sorrow and all the psychological wounds and hurts one has received from childhood. One should be free from all that.

Our thinking is the outcome of knowledge, and knowledge is always limited. Knowledge always goes hand in hand with ignorance. There is no complete knowledge about anything. Our thinking, which is born out of our knowledge, is always limited under all circumstances, whether you are a scientist or a psychologist or an engineer, and so on. So thought, thinking, is limited, circumscribed, and what is limited must inevitably, in its action, create fragmentation. Thought itself is the cause of all division, of all fragmentation. Unless one understands the nature and the structure of thought, one cannot go very far, and to go very far you must begin very near, which is you, how you think, what you think, and discover for yourself that thought always is limited. Thought can invent god, the immeasurable, the nameless, the invisible, the supreme, but it is still the product of thought. So thought is one of the major factors of our conflict, of our misery, of our sorrow. Unless one understands this basically, very deeply, not intellectually, not verbally or argumentatively or logically, unless you understand the nature of thinking, you cannot begin to discover for yourself a new instrument, a totally different instrument. Because, the only instrument we have now is thought, and thought has created incredible problems, most complex problems, and thought tries to solve those problems and thereby creates more problems. You must have noticed this politically, religiously, and so on. We must find together a new instrument, and that is what we are going to do when we talk about death, religion, meditation. And to understand, to discover, and to come upon something that is not man-made, that something must be beyond time, beyond all measure.

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 together will go into this because, there is an end to sorrow. sorrow comes with the loss of somebody, with the death of somebody. My son - I have lost him; there is grief and tears and great sense of loneliness. Then, in that state of shock, in that state of pain, anxiety, loneliness, I seek comfort, I want to escape from this agony. I escape through every form of entertainment, whether it is the drug, the alcohol, the temple, mosque or the church. I begin to invent all kinds of fanciful concepts. I lost him, he is dead, gone, and there is that pain. Can one remain with that pain? Can I look at that pain, hold it, hold it as a precious jewel - not escape, not suppress, not rationalize it, not seek the cause of it, but hold it as a vessel holds water? Hold this thing called sorrow, the pain, that is, I have lost my son and I am lonely, not to escape from that loneliness, not to suppress it, not to intellectually rationalize it, but to look at that loneliness, understand the depth of it, the nature of it. Loneliness is total isolation which is brought about through our daily activity of selfish ambitions or ideological ambitions, competitions, each one out for himself. Those are the activities which bring about loneliness. But if you run away from it, you will never solve sorrow. The very word `sorrow' etymologically means passion. Most of us have no passion. We may have lust, we may have ambition, we may want to become rich; we donate our energies to all that. But that does not bring about passion. Only with the ending of sorrow there is passion. That is total energy, not limited by thought. So it is important to understand the nature of suffering and the ending of it. The ending of it is to hold that sorrow, that pain, too. Look at it. It is a marvellous thing to know how to hold the pain and look at it, be with it, live with it, not get bitter, cynical, but to see the nature of sorrow. There is beauty in that sorrow, depth in that sorrow.

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.

J. Krishnamurti Mind Without Measure Talks in Calcutta 3rd Public Talk 27th November, 1982 `The Ending of sorrow'

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.

If you are really, deeply, concerned with the nature of fear and the total ending of psychological fear, one has to go into the question of time in depth and also the nature and structure of thought. But if you say, `Please tell me a method to get rid of fear,' then you are asking a terribly wrong question because, the very question implies that you have not understood yourself, you have not looked at yourself. Death, conflict, pain, sorrow, pleasure, fear, meditation, all that is our life, and to understand it one must have vitality, strength and you will not have that energy if you are merely repeating words, if you cling to some belief, to some conclusions; that destroys all energy. Energy implies freedom; not what you like to do, but freedom. Only then you have extraordinary energy.

We are going to find out together if there is a new instrument totally different from thought, which thought has not touched at all, because whatever thought touches must be limited and, being limited, it must inevitably create conflict, bring about fragmentation, as it has done in the world - religious fragmentation, political fragmentation, and so on. Is this clear? Can we go on from there? If you are at all serious, deeply concerned, if you have a great affection for humanity, you must have the energy to enquire; the drive, the passion, to find out. A new instrument is so absolutely necessary in this world which is degenerating day by day, destroying itself. By questioning the nature of thought, doubting, asking, probing, we are going to find out for ourselves that thought, at whatever level, is fragmentary, limited, finite, and this limitation has conditioned the brain. The brain has got extraordinary capacity as can be seen from what is happening in the technological world, but the capacity has been developed in one direction only and that is in the technological world - the doctor, the surgeon, the mathematician, the computer expert, and so on. But the human problems, which is our conflict with each other, our sorrow, pain, grief and endless conflict, the technological world can never solve. No politician, no system, no method, is concerned with all that. As ordinary human beings, we are going to find out for ourselves if there is or if there is not a new instrument which is not touched by thought, which is not the result of time, which is not caught in the process of evolution which is thought.

The question is, if you change fundamentally, you affect the whole consciousness of man. Napoleon affected the whole consciousness of Europe. Stalin affected the whole consciousness of Russia. The Christian saviour, he has affected the consciousness of the world, and the Hindus with their peculiar gods have affected the consciousness of the world. When you as a human being, radically transform psychologically, that is, be free of fear, have right relationship with each other, end sorrow and so on, which is a radical transformation, then you affect the whole consciousness of man. It is not an individual affair. It is not a selfish affair. It is not individual salvation; it is the salvation of all human beings of which you are.

Now we are going to enquire into the nature of our consciousness. Your consciousness is what you are - your belief, your ideals, your gods, your violence, fear, romantic concepts, your pleasure, your sorrow, and the fear of death and the everlasting question of man, which has been from time immemorial, whether there is something sacred beyond all this. That is your consciousness. That is what you are, You are not different from your consciousness. We are asking whether that content of consciousness can be transformed, can be totally changed.

First, your consciousness is not yours. Your consciousness is the consciousness of all humanity, because what you think, your beliefs, your sensations, your reactions, your pain, your sorrow, your insecurity, your gods, and so on, are shared by all humanity. Go to America, go to England, Europe or Russia, China, you will find human beings suffer everywhere. They are frightened of death, they have beliefs, they have ideals. They speak a particular language, but their thinking, their reactions, their responses, generally are shared by all human beings. This is a fact that you suffer, your neighbour suffers; that neighbour may be thousands of miles away, but he suffers. He is as insecure as you are. He may have a lot of money but inwardly there is insecurity. A rich man in America, or the man in power, all go through this pain, anxiety, loneliness, despair. So, your consciousness is not yours any more than your thinking. It is not an individual thinking. Thinking is common, is general, from the poorest man, the most uneducated, unsophisticated man in a little, tiny village to the most sophisticated brain - the great scientists; they all think. The thinking may be more complex, but thinking is general, shared by all human beings. Therefore, it is not your individual thinking. This is rather difficult to see and to recognise the truth of it, because we are so conditioned as individuals. All your religious books, whether Christian or Muslim or another, all sustain and nourish this idea, this concept of an individual. You have to question that. You have to find out the truth of the matter.

To have a conversation with another, a friendly, serious communication with each other, we must learn how to listen. We hardly ever listen to another. We carry on with our own thoughts, with our own problems, with our own particular ideas and conclusions, and so it is very difficult to listen to another. We are suggesting that you listen. There is an art of listening. We are going to talk over together a great many things - the state of war, divided nations, divided groups, human relationship. We are going to talk over together the problems of fear, pleasure and the complexity of human thought. We are going to talk over together whether sorrow can ever end and the implications and the complexities of death. We are also going to talk over together what is religion, what is meditation, and if there is anything sacred, eternal. We are going to talk over together all these things. And one must have the art of listening to all this; not what you think with all your traditions, with all your knowledge, but to listen to another who is telling you something. Then communication becomes simple, easy. But if you are not thinking together, which is quite an arduous task, then you and the speaker will be thinking in two different directions. So there is an art of listening; not translating what the speaker is saying, but listening to the word, the content of the word, the significance and the depth of the word. We are using ordinary, daily language. There is no jargon, there is no specialized subject about which we are talking. We are talking of human beings and problems. The word has depth, meaning, and we are speaking in English, using the daily language without any mysterious words being used. It is important that you and the speaker establish a right relationship. He is not a guru. He is not going to inform you what to think, how to think, but together we are going to observe the activities of human beings right throughout the world, why they have become what they are.

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.

We are asking, is attachment one of the causes of this sorrow? I am attached to my son and he dies, and then I invent various forms of comfort. I never remain with sorrow. To remain, not to escape, not to seek comfort, not to run off to some form of entertainment, religious or otherwise, but to look at it, live with it, understand the nature of it - when you do that, sorrow opens the door to passion. You are not passionate people because you have never understood the nature of sorrow and the ending of sorrow. You have become very dull. You accept anything, accept sorrow, accept fear, you accept being dominated by politicians, by your guru, by all the books and traditions. That means you never want to be free and you are frightened to be free, frightened of the unknown. You invent various forms of consoling, illusory images and hopes.

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.

So we are asking, is pain, the anguish, sorrow, brought about by our isolation of mind, of thought, of action? Is sorrow the result of our daily attachment, how we are attached to people? Please wake up to all this, see the truth of all this. Please explore the nature of attachment. It breeds anxiety, fear, pain, jealousy, hatred. All these are the consequences of attachment. You are attached to your wife or to your husband. See the consequences of it. You depend on each other, that dependence gives a form of security. When that person leaves or dies or runs away from you, you are then in pain, in agony, you have suspicion, hatred and sorrow. Don't you know all this? It is nothing new. This is an everyday fact of life. It may not happen to you, but it is happening to others, millions of others. In their relationship, there is sorrow, fear, agony.

And, is attachment the cause of sorrow? I am attached to my wife, to my son, to my memories, to my beliefs, to my experience. I am attached to that. I believe and I am attached to that belief, and when that belief is questioned, doubted, shaken, there is uncertainty, pain. Is that one of the causes of sorrow? Is it possible to be free of all beliefs, not one particular belief or one particular ideal, but to be totally free of all ideals, all beliefs? Please don't ask, `If one is free of belief and ideals, what do you replace it by?' That is a wrong question. See the truth that any belief, any ideal, divides people. I believe that god exists or does not exist. I believe in certain ideology - communist, socialist, capitalist, whatever it is, for which I am willing to fight, kill people. We believe because it gives us some sense of security. You may believe in god, as most of you do, because it gives you a sense of protection, guidance, security. The mind has invented, the brain has invented, various forms of security - nationalism, religious figures, and the so-called sacred books. They have all given a certain quality of security. Actually, there is no security at all. It is an illusion. To realize that belief, ideals and so on are very, very destructive, that they separate man from man, and to see the truth of it, is to become intelligent. Only in intelligence there is complete security, not in your beliefs, in your myths and ideals. To discover this intelligence - and that intelligence is not yours or the speaker's, it is intelligence - is to see the false as false and end the false. To see `what is' actually, not imagine and run away from it but to see actually what we are, and in that exploration there is the awakening of intelligence.

When we are enquiring into the nature of sorrow, we are not discussing your particular, narrow, little pain and agony but the agony of mankind and you actually are mankind. This enquiry is not selfish. This enquiry opens up tremendous possibilities. Kindly listen, find out for yourself the nature of sorrow, why human beings all over the world have gone through tortures, sorrow. What is sorrow and why has not mankind put it off, thrown it off? Please ask this question of yourself. Why must you have some kind of sorrow, some kind of grief, pain, the sorrow of loneliness, though you may be married, have children? You are lonely people. You have separated yourself enormously. When there is a great grief, you realize how lonely you are. We are asking, is one of the causes of sorrow this loneliness? Loneliness is the result of our daily life. Each one of us, from the highest to the lowest, is completely convinced that he is a separate soul, separate entity, and all his activity is self-centred. The daily activity of this self-centredness will inevitably bring about solitude, loneliness, separatism, division. We are asking, is this isolation in our way of thinking, in our way of life, one of the causes of sorrow?

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.

We are questioning, asking the causes of sorrow, the pain of sorrow, the grief, the anxiety that comes with sorrow, the utter loneliness of sorrow. Like pleasure, sorrow is narrowed down as mine. When we are concerned with our own particular sorrow, we neglect, we disregard, we are not concerned with the sorrow of mankind, whereas our consciousness is the consciousness of humanity. One must understand this very clearly because, in understanding the nature of our consciousness, what we are, we begin to see that our pain, our loneliness, our depression, our joys, our beliefs, are shared by all humanity. You may believe in one kind of god and he may believe in another kind of god, but belief is common, belief is general, and that is our consciousness. That is what you are. The language you speak, the food you eat, the climate, the clothes, the education, the constant repetition of certain phrases, the loneliness, the ultimate fear of death, is the ground on which all humanity stands. You are the humanity. Your consciousness is not individual. It is the consciousness of all mankind with their myths, superstitions, with their images, fears, and so on. This is important to understand, not intellectually, not verbally, but with your heart, with your mind, because, when we come to the question of what is death, we must first understand the nature of our consciousness, the nature of what we are actually; not what we should be, but what we actually are in daily life. That actuality is shared by each and every human being in the world.

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.

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.

We are conditioned, and we are asking whether it is possible to be free. Don't say it is or it is not, because that will be absurd; whereas if you are enquiring, then you are learning through investigation. Where do you begin to enquire whether it is possible to free the brain from its conditioning, to enquire whether it is possible not to be a Hindu or a Muslim or a Sikh, but a human being with all the travails of humanity, the anxieties, the uncertainties, the depth of sorrow and pain? Do you begin to enquire from the outside or do you begin to enquire from inside? That is, is the outside world different from the world in which we live inside? Do you understand that question? The society, the morals, the outward world - is that different from you or have you created it? Please look at this: The world is you and you are the world. It is very important to understand this. In our disorder, in our confusion, in our desire for security, we have created a world outside of us as society, which is corrupt, immoral, confused, everlastingly at war, because we in ourselves are confused, we are in conflict.

So, let us proceed from that. Is your mind, your brain, conditioned? Do you understand that word `conditioned'? From the moment we are born, the brain is being conditioned, shaped by tradition, by religion, by the literature you read, by the newspapers, by parents. the brain has lived for millions of years. It has had great many experiences. It has faced wars, sorrow, pleasure, pain, agony, great disturbances. And it is conditioned as a Hindu, as a Sikh, as a Muslim, as a Christian. Why is it conditioned? We are enquiring seriously whether your brain which is conditioned - if you are aware of it - can that conditioning be resolved? Do we see actually that we are conditioned? Do both of us agree to this at least? If you are conditioned, it means your being becomes mechanical - you repeat that you are a Hindu, you are a Muslim, you are a Marxist, and so on. Your brain becomes mechanical, repeating the same thing over and over again. So, first, do we, two of us, talking together as friends, realize actually that our brains are conditioned? Then we ask whether it is possible to free the brain from being a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Marxist. We are human beings, not labels. But labels count a great deal. That is what is going on.