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There is no end to talking, to arguments, to explanations, but explanations, arguments and talking do not lead to direct action because for that to take place we need to change radically and fundamentally...

The outward changes are many. They are forcing us to conform to a certain pattern of activity, but to meet the challenge of everyday life there must be a deep revolution. Most of us have an idea, a concept of what we should be or what we ought to be, but we never change fundamentally. Ideas, concepts of what one should be do not make us change at all. We only change when it is absolutely necessary and we never see directly the necessity for this change. When we do want to change, there is a great deal of conflict and resistance, and we waste a great deal of energy in resisting, in creating a barrier.

Mere acquisition of knowledge, mere listening to a lot of ideas, to a great many talks does not bring about wisdom. What brings wisdom is self-observation, examination of ourselves. To examine we must be free, free, from the censor, the entity that is always evaluating, judging, approximating. Then only can we look, examine. There is action only when, from that observation, without creating the idea, there is direct action...

Our problem, one of the many that we have, is how to conserve this energy, the energy that is necessary for an explosion to take place in consciousness, an explosion that is not contrived, that is not put together by thought, but an explosion that occurs naturally when this energy is not wasted. Conflict in any form, at any level, at any depth of our being is a waste of energy...

After asking a question of that kind either we are waiting for an answer, an explanation, or each one of us is aware of the nature of our contradictions and conflict. By awareness I mean to observe, to examine without any judgment, without any choice, to see our lives, our everyday lives, which are in conflict - just to be aware of them. Then we will begin to understand the structure of contradiction... 

But if we become choicelessly aware of this contradictory nature of our being, just looking at it without wanting to solve the conflict, without taking sides about the conflict, just observing, then we discover that conflict will always exist as long as the observer, the censor, is different from the thing he looks at. I think this is the root of conflict. If we could only understand this, not philosophically, not through explanations or agreement, but by actually looking at it!

Take for instance this sense of loneliness, this sense of isolation that we each feel. When we become conscious of it, we run away, to churches, to museums; we listen to music, to the radio; we take to drink and dozens of other things. The tension becomes much greater. There is this fact that we are terribly lonely, isolated, having no relationship with anything. Not being able to understand it, not being able to face it, come directly into contact with it, we escape from it. And the escape naturally, obviously, is a waste of energy because the fact is still there.

In becoming aware of it, you discover that there is an observer who is looking at that loneliness. The loneliness is something different from the observer. As you are listening, if I may suggest, please don't merely follow intellectually what is being said. It will have no value at all, but if you become aware of your own loneliness, which most of us know, then you will see that you are looking at it, that the thing you look at is different from the observer. The loneliness is not you. The observer is different from the observed and therefore makes an effort to overcome it, to escape from it, asks questions about what to do, what not to do, how to resolve it. The actual fact is that the observer is the observed and as long as there is this division between the observer and the observed, there must be conflict.

Take another effort that we make. There are contradictory desires, each desire pulling in a different direction. There is a constant battle going on. If we are at all aware, serious, we know what is taking place within our own consciousness. The observer decides which desire shall dominate, which desire shall be pursued, or, not being conscious, he pursues one, and so engenders conflict.

Again, there is conflict as long as we do not understand pleasure. We are talking about pleasure, not a puritanical resistance to pleasure or the avoidance of pleasure or how to resolve pleasure or how to overcome pleasure. If we try to overcome desire, pleasure, any actual fact, then we create conflict, a resistance against it. But when we begin to understand the structure of pleasure, how our minds, our brains, our desires work with regard to pleasure, then we begin to discover that wherever there is pleasure there is pain. When we understand that, not intellectually, not verbally, but actually, when we actually realize that fact, then there is not the avoidance of pleasure but the actual state of what takes place when we understand the nature and the structure of pleasure. We are talking about the necessity of gathering all energy to bring about a radical revolution in consciousness itself, because we must have a new mind; we must look at life totally differently. To bring about this explosion we must find out how we waste our energies. Conflict is a waste of energy. Resistance to or the acceptance of pleasure is also a waste of energy...

You find as you begin to learn about yourself, not analytically, not as an examination, layer after layer, of yourself as you are, which again will take a lot of time, that becoming aware of the totality of your being, whatever you actually are, is possible only when you understand that all consciousness is limited, conditioned. When you are aware of that, when you are totally attentive to that conditioning, then analysis becomes quite useless.

I do not know if you have noticed for yourself immediately the truth of your own mind, your own thoughts, your own feelings. You can see immediately. But that again requires sensitivity, not knowledge, not discipline. To be sensitive not in any particular direction, as an artist, but to be sensitive totally, to be aware of everything around you, of the colours, of the trees, of the birds, of your own thoughts, of your own feelings - that makes the mind extraordinarily alert, sharp, clear. Then you can face the problems of existence. A problem exists only when you give root to an issue. But if you can understand the problem instantly, then the problem ceases. When there is an adequate response to the challenge, to any challenge, the problem is not. It is only when we are not capable of responding adequately to the challenge that there is a problem.

Look at the problem of fear, the problem, not how to get rid of it, not what to do. For most of us fear is constant. Either we are aware of it or there are unconscious fears, deep-rooted, with which we never come in direct contact. We have ideas, images about fear, but we are never actually in contact with the fact. However much one may be intimately related with a person, which we call relationship, what actually takes place is a relationship between the images the two people have about each other. That's what we call relationship, one image making contact with another image. In the same way, we never come into contact with actual fear...

We have many fears and one of the major fears is the fear of death. If we are alive to life, we are aware of this extraordinary thing called death. We don't know how to meet it because we are afraid. To meet what is called death, one has first of all to be free of fear...

After all that is the religious mind, not the beliefs the dogmas, the rituals, the sects, the propaganda that has been going on for 2,000 or 10,000 years, which is not religion at all. We are slaves to propaganda either of the business man or of the priest...

There are also those who are conditioned to believe. Both are the same, the believer and the non-believer. To find out if there is something beyond that which thought has put together we must deny everything; we must deny dogma, belief, our hopes and fears. That's not really very difficult to do either, because when we want to learn we set aside all the absurd things that man has created out of his fear...

The extraordinary experiences and visions of all the saints and all the religious people are projections of the old, of their conditioned minds. The Christian sees his Christ because he has been conditioned by the society in which he lives as he has been growing up...

To be a light to oneself, there must be a burning passion, intensity. It isn't something domesticated. Out of all this turmoil, misery, confusion and despair comes that revolution, that inward mutation.

It is only a new mind that can come upon that thing which is called God or truth or whatever name one likes to give it. But the known cannot know the unknown, and we are the result of the known. Whatever the known, which is thought, does will push the unknown further away. It is only when thought has understood itself and has become quiet that there is an understanding of this whole process, of thought, pleasure and fear. This is meditation.

It is not a practice, a discipline, a conformity which makes the mind quiet. What makes the mind really silent is the understanding of itself, its thoughts, its desires, its contradictions, its pleasures, its attachments, its loneliness, its despair, its brutality and its violence. Out of that understanding comes silence, and it is only a silent mind that can perceive, can see actually what is.