To observe without distortion
Public Talk 1
Can we think together about the crisis we are facing?
Public Talk 1 Ojai, California
May 03, 1980
We have conflict, outwardly and inwardly. Unless we resolve this conflict, humanity is going to destroy itself. We are investigating our own brain, not the brain according to psychologists and neurologists. If you examine according to the authority, it is the authority you are examining and not your brain. Can conflict end immediately? When it doesn’t end, when you have not the urgency of ending it immediately, you enter time. Society can only be changed if human beings who have created it change themselves. How does each one of us approach this crisis? The approach to the fact matters. Is your approach rational or irrational? Is your approach based on hope or desire? If it is, you are not free to observe the fact.
Public Talk 2
Observation is the total denial of analysis
Public Talk 2 Ojai, California
May 04, 1980
Observation is entirely different from analysis. Observation is immediate: you see the tree. If you begin to analyse you don’t see the tree. Analysis implies the analyser analysing something outside of himself. If you observe very carefully, the analyser is the analysed. How do you observe conflict? What is the thing that is hurt? Is it your psyche, or basically the image that you have built about yourself? Knowledge can never be complete. Whatever psychological knowledge one has acquired, it is surrounded by the shadow of ignorance. Thought has built the world, technologically, psychologically, and the world of mischief, turmoil, anxiety, fear and destruction. What is the nature of thinking?
Public Questions 1
1st Question & Answer Meeting 2
Public Questions 1 Ojai, California
May 06, 1980
Q1: What is the significance of history in the education of the young? Q2: Why is knowledge always incomplete? Does awareness lead to analysis? Q3: Doesn’t thought originate as a defence against pain? How does one go beyond the defences developed in childhood?
Public Questions 2
2nd Question & Answer Meeting 2
Public Questions 2 Ojai, California
May 08, 1980
Q1: There is a prevalent assumption that everything is relative and a matter of personal opinion. What is an intelligent response to this belief? Q2: What is right action with regard to violence? Q3: The hope that tomorrow will solve our problems prevents our seeing the absolute urgency of change. How does one deal with this? Q4: Are there any psychological needs which we human beings are responsible for meeting in our daily relationship with others? Is there such a thing as true psychological need? Q5: What does it mean to see the totality of something? Is it ever possible to perceive the totality of something which is moving? Q6: Is there a state that has no opposite, and may we know how to commune, and communicate with it?
Public Talk 3
Is time necessary to end something psychologically?
Public Talk 3 Ojai, California
May 10, 1980
It is not your brain or a particular individual’s brain, it’s the brain of mankind. That brain has functioned in various patterns: fear, pleasure and reward or punishment. Is it possible to go beyond these patterns? Are you depending on others – the church, politics, gurus – to change or bring about order in yourself? We are responsible for the disorder that exists in the world. This disorder is created by thought. Why has thought brought about marvellous medicine and also created wars and destroyed human beings? How will you meet violence? Is it possible to end your hatred and jealousy immediately, so that the brain has broken the pattern and can think, act and observe totally differently?
Public Talk 4
Desire, attachment and fear
Public Talk 4 Ojai, California
May 11, 1980
How does desire come into being and why does it play such an extraordinary part in one’s life? Greed is a form of desire. Greed is encouraged by industrialists and advertisements. Thought creates the image of a person and is attached to that image. Can attachment, with all its consequences, end? What is fear? Isn’t one afraid of letting go of attachment? Why haven’t we, with all our knowledge and experience, resolved this problem of fear completely? Is fear time? Is fear a movement of thought? Note: a total of 5 minutes of missing video is replaced by audio only.
Public Questions 3
3rd Question & Answer Meeting
Public Questions 3 Ojai, California
May 13, 1980
Q1: What is true creativity? How is it different from that which is celebrated in popular culture? Q2: You have said that in the very seeing there is action. Is this action the same as the expression of action? Q3: For the making of images to end, must thought also end? Is the end of image-making merely a foundation upon which one can begin to discover what love and truth are? Q4: Would you please make a definitive statement about the non-existence of reincarnations, since increasing ‘scientific evidence’ is now being accumulated to prove reincarnation as a fact. Q5: If ‘you are the world’ - in quotes - and one feels it, sees it, what does it mean to step out of the stream? Who steps out of it?
Public Questions 4
4th Question & Answer Meeting
Public Questions 4 Ojai, California
May 15, 1980
Q1: What is the actual substance of fear? What am I to look at when I look at fear itself? Q2: When one sees in the world about us no demonstrable universal principle of justice, I feel no compelling reason to change myself or the chaotic society outside. Can you share your perception on this matter with us? Q3: Can we die psychologically to the self? How can I observe in my current state of fragmentation? Is it like the ‘I’ trying to see the ‘I’? Q4: In observation without the observer is there a transformation, from staying with the fact, that leads to an increase of attention? Q5: What is the relationship of attention to thought? Is there a gap between attention and thought? Why is your mind chattering?
Public Talk 5
Psychologically we are one unitary movement
Public Talk 5 Ojai, California
May 17, 1980
We seem not to realise the central fact that each one of us is responsible for what is going on in the world. Distortion takes place when there is any fear in our observation. Why are human beings all over the world condemned to everlastingly follow pleasure in different ways? Can the mind not record? Can hatred and violence end, not at some future time but end as you are listening? Psychologically we are one unitary movement. Through our education and our desires we have narrowed this vast, immense mind to our petty quarrels, jealousies and anxieties. Is suffering ended by an act of will? Psychologically, when there is the loss of someone, never escape from it; look at it. That is, to observe without distortion.
Public Talk 6
Action, observation and dying while living
Public Talk 6 Ojai, California
May 18, 1980
There can never be complete knowledge; knowledge always goes with ignorance. So our action, when based on knowledge, must be incomplete. Is there an action which is not born out of time? Is it possible to die to the centre, and yet be alive, active, working? Our mind clings to continuity. In continuity there is security: I was, I am, I will be. That concept or idea gives tremendous strength. Death denies all this and we are afraid. Observe your attachment or aggression without direction, motive or desire. In that very observation there is an ending of it. Death is while living, not at the end of life when you are old, diseased, unconscious. End the things that the mind has collected, easily, with certain grace, so that there is a different quality of the mind. Is there something beyond all matter?