All change must begin with the Individual

The individual is obviously of the greatest significance in society because it is only the individual who is capable of creative activity, not the mass - and I shall explain presently what I mean by that word creative. If you see this fact, then you will also realize that what you are in yourself is of the highest importance. Your capacity to think, to function with wholeness, with an integration in which there is no self-contradiction - this has an enormous significance.

We see that if there is to be any real change in the world - and there must be a real change - then you and I as individuals will have to transform ourselves. Unless there is a radical change in each one of us, life becomes an endless imitation, ultimately leading to boredom, frustration, and hopelessness.

A mind in Mutation

Observation implies no accumulation of knowledge, even though knowledge is obviously necessary at a certain level: knowledge as a doctor, knowledge as a scientist, knowledge of history, of all the things that have been. After all, that is knowledge: information about the things that have been.

There is no knowledge of tomorrow, only conjecture as to what might happen tomorrow, based on your knowledge of what has been. A mind that observes with knowledge is incapable of following swiftly the stream of thought. It is only by observing without the screen of knowledge that you begin to see the whole structure of your own thinking. And as you observe - which is not to condemn or accept, but simply to watch - you will find that thought comes to an end.

Casually to observe an occasional thought leads nowhere, but if you observe the process of thinking and do not become an observer apart from the observed - if you see the whole movement of thought without accepting or condemning it - then that very observation puts an end immediately to thought, and therefore the mind is compassionate, it is in a state of constant mutation.

The moment there is accumulation... !

To understand conflict, we must understand relationship, and the understanding of relationship does not depend on memory, on habit, on what has been or what should be.

It depends on choice-less awareness from moment to moment, and if we go into it deeply, we shall see that in that awareness there is no accumulative process at all. The moment there is accumulation, there is a point from which to examine, and that point is conditioned; and hence, when we regard relationship from a fixed point, there must be pain, there must be conflict.

Energy's Own Momentum....

Energy that has no resistance

Now, how do we awaken in ourselves an energy that has its own momentum, that is its own cause and effect, an energy that has no resistance and does not deteriorate? How does one come by it?

The organized religions have advocated various methods, and by practicing a particular method one is supposed to get this energy. But methods do not give this energy.

The practice of a method implies conformity, resistance, denial, acceptance, adjustment, so that whatever energy one has is merely wearing itself out. If you see the truth of this, you will never practise any method. That is one thing. Secondly, if energy has a motive, an end towards which it is going, that energy is self-destructive. And for most of us energy does have a motive, does it not? We are moved by a desire to achieve, to become this or that, and therefore our energy defeats itself. Thirdly, energy is made feeble, petty, when it is conforming to the past - and this is perhaps our greatest difficulty. The past is not only the many yesterdays but also every minute that is being accumulated, the memory of the thing that as over a second before. This accumulation in the mind is also destructive of energy.

So to awaken this energy, the mind must have no resistance, no motive, no end in view, and it must not be caught in time as yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Then energy is constantly renewing itself and therefore not degenerating. Such a mind is not committed; it is completely free, and it is only such a mind that can ind the unnameable, that extraordinary something which is beyond words. The mind must free itself from the known to enter into the unknown.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Spontaneity of response

Most of us are trapped, whether we like it or not, because that is our world, that is our society; and awareness in relationship is the mirror in which we can see ourselves very clearly. To see clearly, there must obviously be no condemnation, acceptance, justification, or identification. If we are simply aware without choice, then we can observe not only the superficial reactions of the mind, but also the deep and hidden reactions, which come out in the shape of dreams, or in moments when the superficial mind is quiet and there is spontaneity of response. But if the mind is conditioned, shaped, and bound by a particular belief, surely there can be no spontaneity, and therefore no direct perception of the responses of relationship.

u must love the very thing you obsrve....

I must love the very thing I am studying

The what is is what you are, not what you would like to be; it is not the ideal because the ideal is fictitious, but it is actually what you are doing, thinking, and feeling from moment to moment. What is is the actual, and to understand the actual requires awareness, a very alert, swift mind.

But if we begin to condemn what is, if we begin to blame or resist it, then we shall not understand its movement. If I want to understand somebody, I cannot condemn him - I must observe, study him. I must love the very thing I am studying.

If you want to understand a child, you must love and not condemn him. You must play with him, watch his movements, his idiosyncrasies, his ways of behaviour; but if you merely condemn, resist, or blame him, there is no comprehension of the child.

Similarly, to understand what is, one must observe what one thinks, feels, and does from moment to moment. That is the actual. Any other action, any ideal or ideological action is not the actual - it is merely a wish, a fictitious desire to be something other than what is.

So to understand what is requires a state of mind in which there is no identification or condemnation, which means a mind that is alert and yet passive...