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Then there is the other state when the mind observes itself as being conditioned in which there is no observer and the thing observed. You see the difference? You observe that your mind is there is the observer who says, "I am conditioned; therefore the observer is different from the conditioned state.
When you say, "My mind is conditioned, I am the result of time, I am the experiencer, and I have the experience", you are talking of the state when there is duality. When you say, "I am angry, and I must not be angry", when you say, "I know I am conditioned", and "how am I to be free from conditioning? ", there is the "you" as the observer, as the thinker, saying, "I must be free".
So there is the dual process going on; that is a fact. It is not that I am trying to establish it; that is a fact, that is how you think. You say, "I am violent, and I must become non-violent" - this country is ridden with that idea; in other countries it is something else.
Here non-violence is a most extraordinary, lovely state, and you hug this and you say, "I must become that". I say that is the fact, that is what you think. There is the observer, the thinker, and the observed and the thought.
So there is the duality which is time, the observer saying, "I must become non-violent; this involves time. It is a gradual process, and how to cement the two becomes the problem. You want to bring the two together, to bridge over.
Then you say, "I must discipline, practise", and you go through various forms of discipline, control, subjugation, this and that, in order to bring these two together which implies all the time an outside factor, the entity who is disciplining - the mind which is controlling, the mind which chooses, the mind which denies, the mind which accepts, as though it is separate from this thing itself. This is what you are doing. I am not describing, I am not telling you, you don't have to approximate to what is being said; this is what you are doing, and I say that all that involves time.
Do you see that you are doing this? Do you observe that you are doing this? I am ambitious; I want to be something for various power, prestige, this gives me power, there is patronage involved in this, I like that, I am ambitious.
Ambitious and to be something that involves I must work, I must be cunning, I must be ruthless, I must see the right people, pull strings, go and cow down, lick somebody`s boots, pay false respect, bend down, almost touch their feet, crawl on my knees. This is what is happening in the world. `I want to be something' that involves time; there is the observer, the thinker who says, "I am going to be that".
Now, with that mind, you are asking, "Is there timelessness?" You are caught in time, the mind is held within that framework, held in that mould, and in that mould you are asking; "Is there timelessness?" I say it is a vain question.
When you shatter the mould, you will find out. Then you will say, "please tell me how to shatter this in order to enjoy that lovely state" - which means, achieving an end; that becomes your ambition; then there is practice, discipline, change, again all in time. When you observe, you are aware without the division as `observer' and the `observed'.
The mind is aware of itself being conditioned - not the mind and the thought being separate. You see the difference, Sirs? This is very difficult, very complicated.
The mind observes itself as the `observer', this is not a hypnotic thing. Watch yourself. When the mind is a slave to this `I want to be this or that', it is in the state in which there is the observer and the observed, the division, the duality, and all the rest of it.
For that mind to realize that the observer is the observed, that there is no separation - it is an extraordinary experience. It is not a rare thing which you do experience. When you are angry, when you are in a tremendous experience, when you are passionate, when you are joyous, when you are carried away by something, in that state of experience, there is not the observer nor the observed.
Haven't you noticed it, Sirs? When you are tremendously angry, in that moment, in that split-second, there is neither the observer nor the observed, you are in that state of experience. Later on you say, "How am I not to be angry?
I must not be angry" and all that. Then time begins. These are facts, Sir, I am not saying something outside facts.
This is not a theory. So, when the mind separates itself as the observer, thinker, as thought and the observer, you are perpetuating time; and then the problem how to bridge the two, the idea and the action, approximating the action to the idea. This is what you are doing.
The idealist, the utopian; the idea and the action; the idea as a cause and the act also as a cause - all this involves time. So the mind is caught in a cause-and effect chain. Now, when the mind observes itself as being conditioned, there is only action, there is no idea; at the moment of anger there is action, at the moment of passion there is action, there is no idea; the idea comes later.
When you feel tremendously about something, strongly about something, there is no idea, you are in that state which is action without the idea; there is no approximating action to an idea - which is a curse of modern civilization, the curse of the idealist. Now we have gone through all that. Do you follow this?
This is meditation, this is real work. Can your mind be aware that it is conditioned - not as observer watching itself being conditioned - , experiencing now - not tomorrow, not the next minute - the state in which there is no observer, the same as the state you experience when you are angry? This demands tremendous attention, not concentration; when you concentrate, there is duality.
When you concentrate upon something, the mind is concentrated, watching the thing concentrated upon; therefore there is duality. In attention, there is no duality, because in that state there is only the state of experiencing. When you say, "I must be free from all conditioning, I must experience", there is still the `I', who is the centre from which you are observing; therefore, in that there is no escape at all because there is always the centre, the conclusion, the memory, a thing that is watching, saying "I must, I must not".
When you are looking, when you are experiencing, there is the state of the non-observer, a state in which there is no centre from which you look. At the moment of actual pain, there is no `I'. At the moment of tremendous joy, there is no observer; the heavens are filled, you are part of it, the whole thing is bliss.
This state of mind takes place when the mind sees the falseness of the state of mind which attempts to become, to achieve, and which talks about timelessness. There is a state of timelessness only when there is no observer. The mind that has observed its own conditions, can it transcend thought and duality?
You see how you refuse to observe something very simple? Sir, when you get angry, is there an idea in that stage, is there a thought, is there an observer? When you are passionate, is there any other fact except that?
When you are consumed with hatred, is there the observer, the idea and all the rest of it? It comes later on, a split-second later; but in that state there is nothing of this. There is the object towards which love is directed.
Is there duality in love? Sir, Love is not directed to something. The sunshine is not directed to you and me; it is there.
The observer and the observed, the idea and the action, the `what is' and `what should be' - in this, there is duality, the opposites of duality, the urge to correlate the two; the conflict of the two is in that field. That is the whole field of time. With that mind, you cannot approach or discover if there is time or if there is not.
How is it possible to wipe that away? Not how, not the system, not the method, because the moment you apply a method you are again in the field of time. Then the problem Is it possible to jump away from that?
You cannot do it by gradation, because that again involves time. Is it possible for the mind to wipe away the conditioning, not through time but by direct perception. This means the mind has to see the false and to see what is truth.
When the mind says, "I must find out what is timeless", such a question for a mind involved in time has no answer. But can the mind which is the product of time wipe itself away - not through effort, not through discipline? Can the mind wipe the thing away without any cause?
If it has a cause then you are back again in time. So you begin to enquire into what is love, negatively, as I explained before. Obviously, love which has a motive, is not love.
When I give a garland to a big man because I want a job, because I want something from him, is that respect, or is it really disrespect? The man who has no disrespect is naturally respectful. It is a mind which is in a state of negation - which is not the opposite of the positive, but the negation of seeing what is false, and putting away the false as a false thing - that can enquire.
When the mind has completely seen the fact that through time, do what you will, it can never find the other, then there is the other. It is something much vaster, limitless, immeasurable; it is energy without a beginning and without an end. You cannot come to that, no mind can come to that, it has only `to be'.
We must be only concerned with the wiping away, if it is possible to wipe it clean, not gradually; that is innocency. It is only an innocent mind that can see this thing, this extraordinary thing which is like a river. You know what a river is?
Have you watched up and down in a boat, swam across the river? What a lovely thing it is! It may have a beginning and it may have an end.
The beginning is not the river and the end is not the river. The river is the thing in-between; it passes through villages; everything is drawn into it; it passes through towns, all polluted with bad chemicals; filth and sewage is thrown into it; and a few miles further, it has purified itself; it is the river in which everything lives - the fish below and on top the man that drinks its water. That is the river; but behind that, there is that tremendous pressure of water, and it is this self-purificatory process that is the river.
The innocent mind is like that energy. It has no beginning and no end. It is God - not the temple-god.
There is no beginning and no end, therefore there is no Time and Timeless. And the mind cannot come to it. The mind which measures in time, must wipe itself away and enter into that without knowing that; because you cannot know it, you cannot taste it; it has no colour, no space, no shape.
That is for the speaker, not for you, because you have not left the other. Don't say there is that state - it is a false state, when that statement is made by a person who is being influenced. All that you can do is to jump out of it, and then you will know - then you won't even know - you are part of this extraordinary state.
March , During these talks, we should not merely listen to what is being said but also listen to our own minds, because mere description or explanation is not sufficient in itself - it is like describing food to a hungry man and such description has no value at all; what he needs is food. Mere theorizing or speculating `what should be' and `what should not be' seems to me so utterly futile and immature. So, the listening has to be such that there is observation of the immediate facts, and that apparent observation is only possible when we are aware of our own minds and the operations of our own minds.
The scientist in his laboratory puts aside theories and observes facts; he does not approximate the fact to the theory. When the fact denies an old theory, he may have a new theory, a new hypothesis; but he is always going from fact to fact. But we unfortunately have a theory which becomes extraordinarily vital, strong, potent, and we try to approximate or adjust the fact to that theory - that is our existence.
We have a permanent idea, a lasting idea that society should be this and relationship should be in this way and so on and on; these are our permanent conditions, demands and traditions and according to them we live, ignoring facts. Now, why does the mind demand permanency? Is there anything permanent?
Theoretically we say there is no permanency because we see life is in a flux - constantly changing, an endless movement; there is never a moment when you can say, "This is permanent". You may lose your job; your wife, your husband may leave; you may die; everything is in a movement that is without end, in a state of flux, constantly changing - these are obvious facts. But yet we want something very permanent.
And to us that permanency is safety, comfort; from that we try to establish all action, don't we? We want permanency in our relationships, in occupation, in character and in a continued experience; we want the permanency of pleasure and the avoidance of pain permanently. We want to be in a state of peace which will be constant, enduring, long-lasting.
We want to make permanent every good form, every good feeling, the feeling which explodes as affection, as sympathy, as love. We seek ways and means to make all this permanent. Then realizing that all this is not permanent, we try to establish within ourselves a spiritual state which is constant, enduring, timeless, eternal and all the rest of it.
That is our constant demand and state. How upset we are if the wife, the husband leaves, how tremendously shaken when death comes! We want everything solidified, made permanent; we want to capture and put into the frame a lovely experience that goes by in a fleeting second.
The incessant demand for permanency is one of our constant urges. Is there such a thing as permanency? Is any thing permanent?
And why does the mind refuse to see the fact that there is nothing permanent in the world, inside or outside? The man who has a good job wants it to last for ever, he is afraid to retire; and when he retires, he begins to enquire for some other permanency. And this demand, the difference between the fact and the urge for something contrary to the fact, creates conflict.
I want a permanent, lasting, enduring relationship with my wife, my children. My wife is like me, a human being, living, moving, thinking, changing; she may look at another or run away; then the trouble begins, the conflict begins - jealousy, envy, fear, hope, despair, frustration. And to overcome that conflict we try to discover various ways and means, not to face the conflict but to find something that will introduce a new factor which will give us another state, another experience of permanency.
I do not know if you have not noticed all this within yourself? I am not talking something extraneous, absurd or theoretical. So, there is conflict.
To me conflict is death. A mind in conflict is a most destructive mind; it does not face facts. It is very difficult to face facts, to look at facts, to be capable of observing facts, to see things actually as they are outwardly and inwardly, without bringing in our prejudices, our conditionings, responses and desires, hopes, fears and all the rest of it.
And this demand for permanency does blind the mind, does make the mind dull, and therefore there is no sensitivity. Sensitivity implies a mind that is constantly not only adjusting but also going beyond the mere actual adjustment, flowing, moving with the fact. The fact is never still; it is like the river always moving, always flowing; the moment there are little pools, little diversions where the water remains, there is stagnation.
A moving, living mind is never still, there is never a sense of permanency; and it is such a mind that is sensitive not only to the ugly, but also to the beautiful, to everything; it is sensitive. So it is the sensitive mind that is capable of appreciating or being in that state which is called beauty or ugliness. I do not know if you have thought at all of what is beauty and what is ugliness.
Unfortunately in this country desire has been suppressed as a religious act. The sannyasis, the saints and the so-called holy people have urged and constantly maintained that desire should be rooted out. When you destroy anything within or without, obviously there is the state of insensitivity; and when the mind is insensitive it is incapable of seeing what is beautiful.
I do not know if you have noticed as you ride in the bus to go to the office, as you talk to the people, as you sit at table, how crude, how thoughtless the people are in their speech and manners, and their complete disregard of another. I am not moralizing, I am merely describing, stating the fact. Beauty is not really the opposite of ugliness; beauty contains the ugly but the ugly does not contain beauty.
Without this sense of what is beautiful - not merely physical adornment but the beauty of gesture, courtesy, consideration, the sense of yielding in which there is a great gentleness, tenderness - , without that sense of beauty surely man is incapable of living in that movement, that moving quality which has no permanency. It is only the mind that demands permanency that is aware of death. How is it possible - how, not in the sense of a method - for the mind to be aware of this conflict between the fact and what the mind wants, and so live in a constant movement which has no resting place, no anchorage, which deeply, inwardly does not demand anything permanent?
I do not know if you have noticed or asked yourself whether there is anything permanent in life? That is one of our greatest difficulties, isn't it? We love somebody, the wife, the husband, the child, perhaps the community, perhaps the world and perhaps the universe; but through it all runs the sense of endurance, constancy, a thing that will know no change.
I wonder if you ever asked yourself why the mind is on the quest for permanency, why it demands permanency. We do not find permanency here because all relationships change, all things move, there is death, there is a mutation. And so we say there is God, there is something which is changeless, which is what we are not; and we are seeking God.
Is the mind capable of putting away all this - not only this urge for permanency but also the memory which has become permanent, the knowledge which prevents the movement of life, its living quality? Is it possible to enter into that movement and yet at the same time have the capacity of recollection which will not interfere with the quality of living, with the quality of something that is dynamic, moving. Most of us think that knowledge, information is necessary, and that gives a certain sense of security, permanency, which colours all our lives.
From that question there arises another What is learning? Is learning merely addition, an accumulative process, and therefore, it is additive, adding, adding, adding - which is mechanical? Is learning mechanical or something entirely different?
The schoolboy is only gathering information, accumulating, adding, putting it by in his storehouse of memory; and when a question is asked he responds. This is the process of acquisition, this is the process of adding. Is that learning?
Unless you answer this for yourself, you are pursuing the path of permanency which is mechanical. The electronic brains, the computers are machines which do astonishing calculations, astonishing things; they are more accurate, more swift, more subtle, more capable of solving difficult problems than the human being, because they are all based on a mechanical process. At present, they are incapable of learning.
Is learning mechanical, or is there only learning when the mind is non-mechanical, which means, when the mind is not in habit? When I have got a dogma or a belief, when I am a devotee of somebody - some saint or some book - I am incapable of learning anything new; I am only translating the new in my devotion, in my identification with the picture, my social work, this and that; and when I do change, it is the change in reaction as reaction, and therefore it is not learning. You cannot learn if you are merely using the mind as a mechanical process of adding, continuing the habit or altering the habit to another series of habits.
Have you not noticed that as you grow older you settle down in habits? How difficult it is to eat some strange food when you are used to eat a particular kind of food! Do watch yourself next time how you sit at the table, your mannerisms.
Your mind has solidified itself in habits, in mannerisms. You have already established a certain pattern of existence, of living, and it is extraordinarily difficult to break it; and the breaking is merely a reaction, and learning is not reaction. A mechanical process is a reactive process; but learning never is.
The quality of sensitivity is not mechanical. It is the sensitive mind that is capable of learning and not the mind that functions in habits, and the mind functions in habit when it is held by tradition. What is the state of your mind when you are learning about something which you do not know?
When it says, "I do not know, I am going to find out", it is waiting to know, it is not blank, it is not humble; it is in a state of expectancy, waiting to gather. But when it says, "I don't know" and is not in a state of expectancy, it is capable of learning because it is intensely active, not in the activity of gathering information but active in itself; it has brushed aside everything it has known - all beliefs, all ideas, all dogmas, all anchorages. So conflict exists when the mind refuses to face the fact, to see the truth or the falseness which is in the fact, because it has certain ideas about the fact; and the conflict is between the idea, hope, tradition, conclusion and the facts.
There is such a thing as death - the physical mechanism wearing itself out, like everything that is used up. I want to learn what is death - not the conclusion or opinion about death, not whether there is reincarnation or if there is continuity after death. I have seen dead bodies being carried, I have seen people in tears, in anxiety, agony, being alone, being frustrated, empty; and I must know about death.
The accumulation of information about death - such as resurrection, reincarnation, continuity - is a mechanical, additive process, which will give comfort to a mind which is already mechanical. But that is not learning about death. There is death, the ending of the physical body; but there may be an ending of a different kind also; I want to learn.
I do not say I must be eternal, continuous, or there is something in me which is everlastingly continuous. I am not interested in what others have said or what is said in books. I have to discard the whole world of information, the mechanical process of knowledge.
If there is any power that is mechanical left in my mind, which is accumulating, I shall not learn; therefore I must die to that without argument. Because my interest is to learn about death, can I die to everything which has become mechanical? - to my sex, to my ambition, to position, power, prestige, which are all mechanical.
Can I die to all this without an argument? When the mind dies to the mechanical process of accumulation with its identifications, to the things it has known, then it is in a state of learning. The interest in learning puts away, destroys the mechanical process of living.
If the mind wants to destroy the mechanical process, it cannot because the thing that wants to destroy is still mechanical, because it wants to get somewhere. But when the interest in learning about death has destroyed the mechanical process, the mind is in a state of not-knowing, a state of emptiness because it is dead to all the mechanical process of memory, insults, hopes, fears, despairs, joy; therefore the mind itself is in a state of the unknown. The unknown is death.
When the mind is itself in a state of the unknown, is aware of itself as the unknown, there is no search any more - it is only the mind that is functioning mechanically that is seeking, and seeking is essentially from knowledge to knowledge. As the mind is no longer seeking - that is an extraordinary state, never seeking any more - it is never in conflict, it is astonishingly alive, sensitive. The unknown cannot be described.
All description is the process of giving you more accumulative knowledge and therefore making you more mechanical. You have to come to the state when you say to yourself, "I do not know" - not out of bitterness, not out of despair, but with that sense of love. Love says, "I do not know", always.
Love never says, "I know". It is the very essence of humility that says, "I do not know", and humility is absolute innocence. March , This is the last talk of this series.
We have been discussing for the last few weeks that the present world situation demands a new mind that is dimensionally quite different, that is not directive, that does not function merely in particular directions, but wholly. Such a new mind is the real `religious mind'. The religious mind is entirely different from the scientific mind.
The scientific mind is directive, it breaks through from the piston engine to the jet engine through various physical barriers, in direction. But the religious mind explodes without direction, it has no direction. And that explosive nature of the new mind is not a matter of discipline, is not a thing to be got, to be reached, to be obtained; if you are reaching, obtaining, gaining, having that as a goal, then it becomes directive and therefore scientific.
The religious mind comes into being when we understand the whole structure of our whole thinking, when we are very familiar with knowing oneself, self-knowing. One has to understand oneself, all the thoughts, the movements, the envy, ambitions, compulsions and urges, fear, sorrow, the aspirations, the clogging nature of belief and dogma and the innumerable conclusions to which the mind comes, either through experience or through information. Such self-knowing is absolutely essential, because it is only such a mind that can, because it has understood itself, wither itself away for the new `to be'.
Logic, reason, clear verbal thinking is not sufficient; it is necessary, but it does not get anywhere. An ambitious man can talk, same as a politician who is generally very ambitious, about non-ambition, about the dangers of ambition - that is verbal logic but has no significance. But if we would understand, if we would enquire into ourselves, we must not only go through the verbal explanation but also drop away alI explanations completely because the explanations are not the real things.
I know several people who have listened for years to what is being said, they are experts in explanations, they can give explanations far better than the speaker verbally, logically, clearly. But look into their hearts and their minds, they are ridden, confused, ambitious, pursuing one thing after the other, always the monkish activity. Such a mind can never comprehend the new mind.
I think it is very important that this. new mind should come into being. It does not come by wish, by any form of desire, sacrifice.
What it demands is a mind that is very fertile, not with ideas, not with knowledge - fertile like the soil that is very rich, the soil in which a seed can grow without being nurtured, carefully watched over; because if you plant a seed in sand it cannot grow, it withers away, it dies. But a mind which is very sensitive is fertile, is empty - empty, not in the sense of nothingness,but it does not contain anything else except the nourishment for the seed. And you cannot have a sensitive mind if you have not gone into yourself far, deeply enquiring, searching, looking, watching.
If the mind has not cleansed itself of all the words, of conclusions, how can such a mind be sensitive? A mind which is, burdened with experience, with knowledge, words - how can such a mind be sensitive? It is not a matter of how to get rid of knowledge, that is merely direction; but one has to see the necessity for the mind to be sensitive.
To be sensitive implies, sensitive to everything, not in one particular direction only - sensitive to beauty, to ugliness, to the speech of another, to the way another talks and you talk, sensitive to all the responses, conscious and unconscious. And a mind is not sensitive when it has a bloated body, eating too much, when it is a slave to the habit of smoking, the habits of sex, the habit of drinking, or the habits which the mind has cultivated as thought - obviously such a mind is not a sensitive mind. Do see the importance of having a sensitive mind, not how to acquire a sensitive mind.
If one sees the necessity, the importance, the urgency of having a sensitive mind, then everything else comes, adjusts itself to that. A disciplined mind, a mind that is conformed, is never a sensitive mind. Obviously, a mind that follows another is not a sensitive mind.
Only that mind is sensitive which is exquisitely pliant, that is not tethered to anything. And a mind that is fertile, not in the invention of new ideas, does not relish or indulge in explanations as though in themselves words are a reality. The "word" is never the "thing".
The word "door" is not the door; these two are entirely different things. But most of us are satisfied with words and we think we have understood the whole structure of the universe and ourselves, by words. Semantically we can reason logically, verbally, very clearly; but that is not a fertile mind.
A fertile mind is empty like the womb before it conceives; as it is empty, it is fertile, rich - which really means, it has purged itself of all the things that are not necessary for the new mind to be. And that comes into being only when you see the urgency of having such a mind, a fertile mind without any belief, without any dogma, without any frustration and therefore without hope and despair, without the breath of sorrow which is really self-pity. Such a mind is necessary for the new mind, and that is why it is essential to enter into the field of self-knowing.
We know several people who have listened to these talks for thirty, forty years and have not gone beyond their own skins inwardly, outwardly; they are incessantly active. Such people are racketeers, exploiting and therefore very destructive people, whether they are politicians or social workers or spiritual leaders who have not really deeply, inwardly, penetrated into their own beings, which is after all the totality of life. You and I are the totality of life, the whole of life - the the physical life, the organic life, the automatic, nervous responses, the sensation, the life that pursues ambitiously its end, the life that knows envy and so everlastingly battles with itself, the life that compares, competes, the life that knows sorrow, happiness, the life that is full of motives, urges, demands, fulfilment, frustrations, the life that wants to reach ultimately the permanent, the lasting, the enduring, and the life that knows that every moment is a fleeting moment and that there is nothing permanent or substantial in anything - all that is the totality of you and that is Life.
And without really understanding all that, mere explanation of all that has no value at all; and yet we are so easily satisfied with explanations, with words - which indicates how shallow we are, how superficial our life is, to be satisfied by cunning words, by words which are very cleverly put together. After all, the Upanishads, the Gita, the Bible, the Koran are just words, and to keep on repeating, quoting, explaining the same is still the continuation of the word; and apparently we are extraordinarily satisfied by these - which indicates how empty, how shallow, how easily satisfied we are by words which are ashes. So it is absolutely essential to understand oneself.
The word "understanding" has nothing to do with the word "explanation". The description is not the understanding, the verbal thing is not the understanding. To understand some thing requires a mind that is capable of observing itself without distortion.
I cannot understand, look at these flowers if my attention is not given to them. In attention there is no condemnation, there is no justification, no explanation or conclusion. You understand?
You observe; and such a state of observation comes into being when there is the urgency to understand, to look, to observe, to see, to perceive; then the mind strips itself of everything to observe. For most of us observation is very difficult, because we have never watched anything,neither the wife, nor the child, nor the filth on the street, nor the children smiling; we have never watched ourselves Now we sit, now we walk, talk, how we jabber away incessantly, how we quarrel. We are never aware of ourselves in action.
We function automatically and that is how we want to function. And having established that habit, we say, "How can I observe myself without the habit?" So, we have a conflict, and to overcome the conflict we develop other forms of discipline, which are a further continuation of habits.
So, habit, discipline, the continuation of a particular idea these prevent understanding. If I want to understand a child I have to look, I have to observe, not at any given moment only but all the time, while the child is playing, crying, doing everything. I have to watch it; but the moment there is a bias I have ceased to watch.
The discovery for oneself of the biases, the prejudices, the experiences and the knowledge that prevents this observation is the beginning of self-knowledge. Without that enquiry of self-knowledge you cannot observe. Without stripping the "I" of the glasses of prejudices and the innumerable conditionings, can you look?
How can the politicians look at the universe, the world, because they are so ambitious, they are so petty, concerned with their advancement, with their country? And we too are concerned with our service, wife, position, achievements, ambitions, envies, conclusions; and with all that we say, "We must look, we must observe, we must understand." We can't understand.
Understanding comes only when the mind is stripped of all these - there must be a ruthless stripping. Because, these engender sorrow, they are the seeds, the roots of sorrow; and a mind that has roots in sorrow can never have compassion. I do not know if you have ever taken up one thing and gone into it and probed into it - such as, envy.
Our society is based on envy, our religion is based on envy. Envy is expressed in society as "becoming", socially climbing the ladder of success. Envy includes competition and that word "competition" is used to cover up envy; our society is built on that.
And the structure of our thinking is built on envy with its comparisons and competition to be something. Take that one thing, envy, understand it and go right through it. Put your teeth into it and strip the mind of envy.