Public Talk 1, Rajghat, 24 January 1960

24th January, ’60.

I believe this is a gathering not for students of this College but for grown-up people like us. So I hope you, the students, will not mind if I talk about things which are not exactly concerning the life of the student.

It seems to me that it is rather important to think fundamentally and feel rather deeply about the major problems of life. I means fundamentally, not merely theoretically, not at all in fact theoretically or speculatively, but rather to free the mind from the circles that it has weaved round itself and also to free itself from the circles that the world, circumstances, traditions, so-called knowledge, has weaved round the mind. Because, most of us think rather superficially; we are satisfied with facile answers and explanations, by quotations, by satisfactory words, and we slither through life. However difficult the problems are, we slither through them rather contented and superficially.

So I would like to suggest to those who are listening seriously, and not passing the time of the day because they have nothing else to do, to go along together, if we can, into the many problems, into the many conflicts and contradictions of our lives. I mean ‘going together’ not in the sense of verbalization, not through explanations, but actually if we can experience what is being said directly and thereby be able to examine our own minds and our own lives so that we come out of it with clarity, precision and understanding. Otherwise we merely indulge in words. You will come to these talks, fortunately or unfortunately, and gather a few more explanations, collect a few more ideas and slip back into the old traditional way of life, or into a way of life which is comfortable, secure, which you have established for yourself.

So I would suggest that those who are really serious about these matters should not only listen to what is being said, but in the very process of listening, gather their own minds, explore their own way of thinking, uncover their own habits and activities in daily life. Otherwise, it seems to me, those talks will not be worthwhile at all, because I have been here and some of you have heard me, fortunately or unfortunately, for the last 10 years and we change very little, we are established and have gained prestige and positions. We are growing old and we will soon be in the grave and without solving any of our problems.

So I would suggest, if I may, that while you are listening to these talks, not accept or reject, it would be immature, but explore together the problems that each one of us has. Actually explore, not only descriptively be satisfied, but actually uncover the conflicts, the confusions, the trivialities of our lives. One can see, not only through newspapers, journals and being observant of the events of the world, that freedom is getting less and less, the margin of freedom is narrowing down. You know what I mean? The mind has very little chance to be free, to be able to think and feel out, because throughout the world religions have crippled them out. Religions which are organised, dogmatic beliefs and superstitions and traditions, have enclosed the mind, have conditioned the mind. You are either a Hindu, a Christian or a Muslim and the organised beliefs from childhood have been imposed and we function within that circle of narrow or wide limitations. Please observe your own minds when you say you are a Hindu or a Muslim or what you will — are you not merely repeating what has been told to you? You do not know, you merely accept because it is convenient, socially, economically, gives you security; so you accept and live within that circle. And so freedom is denied not only to the Hindu, Christian, Catholic, Muslim and all the rest of the people who are held within the enclosure of an organised religion, but also you will see to whatever profession you belong is also enslaving you. How can a man who has spent 40 years in a particular profession or the profession as a doctor, look what happens to him. He spends 7 years in college and for the rest of his life he is a general practitioner or a specialist so that he is enslaved by the profession. So his margin of freedom is very little. And the same is the case with politicians, with the social reformers, with people who have ideals and people who have an objective.

So you see, if you are observant, everywhere throughout the world, the margin of freedom and human dignity is getting less and less and less. Our minds are mere machines. We learn a subject and for ever after we are slaves to that subject. And it seems to me that it requires a great deal of understanding, a great perception, a great insight to break this circle that the mind and society has woven round each one of us. And to think of all these problems anew, fundamentally, deeply, radically, I think one has to be revolutionary, totally thinking, feeling, from the outside, from the whole of society. And to think of these problems anew, to look at these enslavements, to learn, one must have, must not one, a sense of humility?

I do not think humility is a virtue. Cultivated virtue is a horror, because the moment you cultivate a virtue, it cesses to be a virtue. Virtue is something very spontaneous, timeless, ever active in the present. And a mind that merely cultivates humility can never know the fullness, the depth, the beauty of humility, to be really humble. If the mind is not that, I do not think it is possible for it to learn. It can function merely mechanically, but surely learning is not a process of mechanical accumulation of knowledge? Surely, learning is something entirely different, isn’t it? And to learn, the mind must be in a sense of great humility.

I want to know what freedom is. Not speculative freedom, self-projected, as a reaction to something. What is that state of real freedom, if there is such a thing — when the mind can actually free itself from all its impositions, traditions, patterns which have been placed upon it for centuries. I want to know what this extraordinary thing is after which people have struggled for centuries and centuries And I want to find out, learn all about it. And how can I find it if I have no sense of humility? Not a self-protective humility which you impose upon the mind which is of an ugly nature, which has nothing to do whatsoever with humility. Humility cannot be cultivated. And it is one of the most difficult things surely, because we have already established ourselves in certain positions. We have certain ideas, we have certain values, experiences, knowledge, and these dictate our activities, our thoughts. An old man with all his accumulated knowledge, with his experiences and those of others, how can such an old mind with all that accumulated knowledge and his urge to be important, his urge that compels him to establish his own position, power, prestige, how can such a mind be in a state of humility, that will learn about its own trivialities?

And it seems to me we have to be extraordinarily attentive, extraordinarily aware of this sense of humility because the world is in an extraordinary confusion, is it not? Look at your leaders, swamis, gurus, friends, everybody, they are in a state of self-contradiction. They do not know what to do, they have tried everything they have had minor explosions in themselves and therefore responded to minor reactions.

When we see poverty, for example, and starvation and all the misery that is going on socially around us and in ourselves there is an explosion. We do want to act, we want to do something, not sit and speculate, everlastingly talk. So the minor explosion brings the minor response. We join something, we join a movement and we work and work and work and that does not satisfy, it has no depth, it does not include all the vast expanse of life. So we throw that aside and we look to something else. And again we join something and so we go on throughout our life, joining, discarding, having minor explosions and responding equally trivially.

Sirs, if I may suggest, please do listen to what is being said, not as a talk but actually. A talk is merely descriptive of oneself, of our existence, and if we are not aware of our lives, if we are not conscious of what is actually taking place within and without, these talks are so empty, so futile. What I do talk about, to relate what is being said to your own life and not merely throw it aside as something very nice, but not applicable, not practicable. After all, what is practicable is to think very clearly, not to deceive oneself. To know the problems what they are, how you respond to them. Not merely wending your way through life because you happen to hold an important position or because you have more votes, but to find out, to feel, surely is extraordinarily important, is it not? So, the mind anyhow is there lethargic, very slow, sluggish and it needs great shaking up, needs moving, because the mind has settled down in a comfortable, secure position and does not want to be disturbed. That is the case with most of us. And from that security, isolated position, it moves, acts and thinks. And, surely, life demands, not only at the present time but always, a totally different response.

So it seems to me that to learn, humility is essential. And we are learning if we are at all aware, all the time, all the time. Life is impressing certain things on the mind but we learn merely as a process of accumulation. I do not know if you have ever thought about learning, what it means to learn. I do not mean the school-boy and school-girl learning which is merely cultivation of memory, a an additive process of gathering information. I do not mean that kind of learning. That is mechanical, that is necessary, that is part of existence, but I am talking about learning as something entirely different to learning up. Surely the mind cannot learn anything if it has already accumulated. From that accumulation it cannot look at anything, can it?

I do not know if you have ever noticed a sunset, or the river? When you look at the river what happens at that river? You have the knowledge of the river, the name, the so-called spiritual significance of the river and this significance, the name, the knowledge, prevent you from looking at the river. Sir am I talking something foreign to all of you? Because I do not feel you are moving with me. Sir, there are many problems of life and how do you look at them?

How do you look at the problem of power? The tyranny of a few people over the majority — how do you regard it? the power of a very learned mind, the power of the sound over the multitude? How do you look at it? What is your interpretation and reaction to it? What is your reaction to the Gita, the Vedas and to all the spiritual books? And if your reactions are merely trivial, traditional, reactions which you have gathered through life, surely you cannot learn.

To, me, learning is a constant, timeless process, it is never cumulative. The moment the mind has accumulated as knowledge, it has ceased to learn. It can acquire, add to its own knowledge, but surely learning is something entirely different, because learning can never be an additive process. I am so sorry, I do not feel you understand this at all. I have no communion with you at all. Too bad.

Sir, surely the mind, your mind is the result of time, is it not? Of many centuries, of many days; now that mind wants to learn, wants to know, understand something. Can it understand anything with all this accumulation? it can interpret what it sees, good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, worth while or not worthwhile, but surely a mind that wants to learn about something must be free from the past, mustn’t it?

So if the mind is to understand, to learn about what freedom is, or enslavement, and to what extent, to what depth it is a slave, it must learn about it. It cannot say, my mind is free or that there is freedom, a goal that it must see. A slavish mind cannot seek freedom, it does not know what it means. Whatever it seeks will still be slavish. Bit if I begin to learn to what extent I am a slave, if I am beginning to learn the fact, the actual fact, then I begin to see where freedom is. But most of us are not concerned with the learning about ourselves. We are concerned with superficial activities, with the escapes from ourselves, through temples, through knowledge, through books, social activities and all the rest of it.

But if am I am concerned, as everyone in the world is, must be, with what is freedom, because freedom is getting less and less; governments do not give you any freedom, even the democratic governments. They talk about freedom and we can sit here and talk and criticise the government, this is not freedom; in the tyrannical governments there is no freedom at all. They do not allow you to talk to each other like this.

And so, the margin of freedom is getting less and less and so human dignity is wearing thinner and thinner. Please do see the importance of this. And if the mind is concerned with slavery and wants to find out what is freedom, because it is only in freedom that you can be creative and to find out and to learn about freedom, you must know to what extent the mind is slavish, now. And being aware of that slavishness can it break through?

Look sir, one’s mind is obviously, if at all it is, must be, aware of the tradition, the culture, the tradition of the family, the group, the nation. How much of that tradition is made up of your mind, how much the mind is a slave to that. You must find out, surely? And to find out, you cannot say, it is right, or wrong, good or bad, what shall I do about tradition, can the mind function without tradition and the superficial questions that one puts in examining something.

I want to know to what extent my mind is a slave to tradition. The tradition of centuries and also the tradition of yesterday which I have created for myself, tradition being habit. To what extent is my mind a slave to habit. And is it possible to free the mind from habit? Because this is the fundamental question, it is not a superficial question. Until I know how to answer it, I can only answer when I learn about it — my investigation into the social problems, my discussion about economic problems, religious things will be very, very superficial. Then I will merely respond, according to my tradition, what society has imposed upon me and as most of are satisfied with such superficial thinking, it is very difficult for any of us, who want to be serious to examine ourselves, to learn about ourselves, to find out to what extent we are slaves. And to learn about ourselves, humility is necessary, is it not?

I do not know if you have ever felt the strange quality of humility. Of course, humility implies love, doesn’t it? It implies a sense of chastened approach to problems. Humility implies an absence of all conclusions, projected goals, that the mind has created. Look sirs, we always talk, the older generation, talk about creating a New generation, a New people. Those very people who talk about a New generation, impose their pattern, way of thinking, over the younger generation. They really do not want a New Generation, they want the perpetuation of their own exact pattern of existence. And if the mind is to learn, surely humility is essential, isn’t it? I am labouring this point because most of our minds are conceited, we think we know. Actually what is it that we know? Have you ever looked at the thing called ‘Knowing’? have you ever inquired into this question of ‘I know’? What you know is what you have gathered, what your experiences are and those experiences are part of your conditioning. You understand sir? If you are a rich man, your experiences are conditioned according to the pattern of your riches. If you are a poor man, your experiences are limited to your poverty. If you are a scholarly person, your experiences are limited to the books. If you are a bureaucrat, it is obvious your experiences of 40 years are limited to that and you say: ‘I know’. And from that conceit you want to shape the existence of other lives. And that is what we do, the politicians, the religious person, scholar the professor, the husband, the wife, everybody does this. It is a curse.

And the problem is, for those who are really serious, not about some goal, about some activity or what they want, these people, they are not serious at all; it is only vanity. I am talking about a serious man who wants to find out, to discover for himself, not repeat what umpteen people have said. Surely such a mind which is serious must explore all these things, must explore if there is such a thing as non-violence.

This country talks a great deal about non-violence, everlastingly, the philosophy of non-violence. To me it is all rubbish, if you will forgive my saying so. We are violent and we create an ideal of non-violence and therefore establish a contradiction within ourselves and having a contradictory mind, we invent a philosophy, which is so silly. Whereas if I said, I am violent, I want to understand this whole problem of violence, not non-violence, I do not know what it means, how can I know what it means? I can speculate about it which is worthless. But if I can learn about violence in myself, watch it, see all its implications, its significance, its neurosis, its contradictory states, to learn about violence requires a great deal of humility, but a mind which says ‘I am seeking non-violence’ is a conceited, speculative mind, escaping from violence. That is what I mean, it creates a contradiction. I am violent and I create or project the states of non-violence. Now, violence and then non-violence which creates a contradiction in him, does it not? And a contradictory mind can never understand. A contradictory mind, a mind which is in contradiction, however much it may speculate about non-violence and discipline will still be in contradiction.

A mind in contradiction is a destructive mind. Please do see, see this simple fact. But the difficulty with us is the simplicity of the fact that we are violent and not how to cultivate non-violence. We refuse to see the fact because we are committed to the patterns of non-violence, whatever that may mean. But if I say to myself, ‘I am violent, I want to understand, go into it totally, entirely, with my whole being’ and I cannot go into it fully, completely, wholly, if I have a contradiction. So I must abandon the contradiction, I must see the falseness of non-violence. What is the good of talking about non-violence when my whole being is violent, which is so silly. I may cover it up. I have to examine, understand, to perceive it, to understand it, go into it, my mind must be in a state of humility. Obviously; you understand sir?

So it seems to me that we must think of all these problems rather fundamentally Now what is satisfactory, not what is for the moment applicable, not how to do something immediately but rather have an overall feeling about all these problems. I am afraid I am not communicating at all to you what I want to convey. It may be my fault, it may be the cold morning or one has not slept properly or one has overeaten. You see, most of us do not want to be disturbed.

Have you ever noticed a man in position with a good job, who gets benefits out of that job, he does not want to be disturbed, he will not let go, he will not let others have the chance, which is the same thing repeated right through the world. It is the same thing with each one of us. And we need a shaking that will loosen us and ultimately of course, death. Is that a problem to you sirs? How can such a mind, which is always seeking security, which is always seeking a haven, it will never be disturbed and, therefore become a slave to that pattern of living, thinking, feeling. How can such a mind be broken? How can such a mind learn?

So our problem is first to know ourselves which is not a goodistic pursuit, because in knowing ourselves we shall know what action is, Because knowing ourselves is the basis of action, real action, action which is worthy, significant. But most of us do not want to know, it is too much of a bore, an exercise; we would rather be told what to do. But to uncover the ways of our thinking, the motive what lies behind our activities, our thoughts, surely that is one of the fundamental issues, isn’t it? Because that will invariably, if we know how to uncover ourselves we shall break the pattern of slavery and we shall then know what freedom is. Because the margin of freedom is getting very narrow. The more progress in the world of things or in the world of ideas, the less freedom there is.

In America, where there is an astonishing prosperity, the world has never known such prosperity, people are becoming slaves to prosperity. That is one of the major issues there now. Here there is no prosperity and we want prosperity, we want more things, more clothes, more food and so on. And to the idea that we must be prosperous, we are becoming a slave.

So please do examine yourself to find out to what extent, to what depth you are slaves, your mind is enslaved. It may not be going to the office, it may not be mechanical slavery to things. It may be that you are a slave to knowledge. And without knowing all this, without really inquiring into all this and uncovering, discovering it for yourself, I do not see how you can live with security.

You know, for most people, life is a despair, you know, because you have worked all your life and there is an end. You have worked socially, trying to reform, and you are frustrated. All philosophies, religions, ideals, everything comes to an end and you are in despair. I do not know if any of you know that state at all. And people who are very clever, when they face this despair, invent philosophies which is driving the world at the present moment, which says, accept things as they are and make the best of it.

We must be in a state of despair, when you have examined everything, all the avenues of activities, explanations and you have no answer, no quotations from the Gita and all the rubbish, when you have no answer, when your mind refuses to be tricked by an explanation, by a facile adjustment, surely you must come to that state, Really this is too difficult — the word ‘despair’ is something which is not the opposite of ‘hope’. We all hope for something, hope to have a better job, to find a way out of a difficult problem. We all have hopes, small or big hopes, and when these are not fulfilled, we are in a state of despair, which is merely a reaction from hope, which means, I am still wanting to find a way out. I do not mean that kind of despair, that is really quite immature. But I am talking of a mind that has examined all these things and has not found an answer. Surely such a mind is not a hopeful mind or a mind seeking hope, wanting to find a final answer. It is in a state of complete not-knowing. Such a mind must be in a sense of complete despair in which there is no way out. Surely only then one finds what is Truth.

You know, Truth or God or all the things one talks about are not so easy to come by. One has to work very hard, not through disciplines and practices which are all so meaningless because they contain the seed of hope and despair. To work hard, to uncover, to see what one is actually thinking, why one is thinking in such and such a way, to uncover the traditions, motives, influences, patterns of thought, habit, is hard work. One has to be attentive all the time. And if one is not, the mind, being sluggish, however much it may discipline itself, further makes the mind more sluggish.

A disciplined mind is essentially a sluggish mind. You think about it, you will see how true it is. An active mind, a mind that has torn everything, and has looked, examined, knows no discipline. The very discipline is this, in the process of examination, the process of understanding. So, sirs, I think it is very important when all that is said is applied to oneself. If one is capable of examining oneself, then you will see, if one really acts very deeply, within oneself, then you will see that there is such a thing as freedom which is not the opposite of slavery but a freedom which really answers. From freedom all the problems of our life have a different meaning altogether. And it seems to me the only important thing in life is to find this freedom. Because in that there is creativity, in that there is reality and all the things that human beings are everlastingly seeking.

Perhaps when next time we meet, we can discuss these problems. I mean by a discussion, not a talk by me, but each one of us can go into it, exchange ideas, which is to explore. Perhaps we can do that and that may be more worthwhile.