Society is transformed not through any economic or social revolution. We have seen this through the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. Our everlasting hope that our inward nature can be transformed by altering outward things has never been fulfilled, and it will never be. Outward change, economic change, is not going to change our attitude, our ways of life, our misery, our confusion.
So to bring about a total change, one has to become aware of oneself—that is, learn about oneself anew. According to recent discoveries of anthropology, we have lived for two million years, and we have not found a way out of this misery. We have escaped from it, we have run away to fanciful illusions, but we have not found a way out. We have not built a totally free society; we have built a society of conformity.
There are societies that, through necessity, cooperate. Through necessity, through compulsion, through an industrial revolution, people live together; they cooperate, conform, follow a pattern. But in that society, as one can observe, there are still conflicts; people are against one another because they are ambitious and competitive, though they may talk about the love of the neighbour. By force we cooperate, but through that cooperation, through that assertion of loving the neighbour, we are competitive, ruthless, ambitious. Therefore such a pattern of society brings about its own destruction.
Then there is a form of society where there is no civic consciousness; each is out for themselves, concerned with their family, their group, their class, their particular part of the country, their linguistic division, but with no civic consciousness. We are not conscious of what is happening to our neighbour; we do not care; we are indifferent to what happens. But yet, if you observe, our religious books have told us that perhaps we will live the next life, therefore we must behave, that there is karma and what we do now will matter, how we talk, how we say things, that behaviour is righteousness and if we do not behave now, we will pay for it next life. This is the crude form. On that, we have been brought up for centuries, and yet such beliefs and ideas have no importance in our lives because we still carry on as though this is the only life that matters. Because we are competitive and ambitious, we destroy our neighbour, and so we are not at all civic-minded.
So there are these two forms of society. One form is that the human beings living in it are made to conform and cooperate out of necessity. Thus they become civic-minded: they do not throw things out on the road because they would be punished; there is order. But within that order, within that framework, each is against the other. In the other form of society, there is no framework and no civic consciousness because they do not believe in what you are being told. We have these two forms of society, and each inherently within itself, has the seed of its own destruction.
So, a religious person is concerned with creating a new society that is neither this nor that, but something entirely different: each behaves righteously every minute because they understand their responsibility as a human being.
We alone are responsible and no other—how we behave, what our activities are, whether we are ambitious, cruel, destructive, hating, jealous, competitive, what our fears are. It is only such a mind that can bring about a new society.
We do need a new society. That society is not going to be created by anybody except by you. I don’t think we feel the immense responsibility of this. That is the first thing that matters because that is the foundation—righteous behaviour, right conduct. Not the conduct of a pattern but the conduct which comes about through learning. If you are all the time learning, that very learning brings about its own righteous action. Therefore it is only the religious mind that can create a new society.