You can learn easily when there is an atmosphere of freedom and friendship, a sense of happiness. That is denied when you are compelled. Compulsion is not righteous behaviour. Q: What is the foundation of religion? Q: Why does a man want success in life? What are you going to be when you grow up? Q: When bad thoughts come to our mind and we want to suppress them, even more bad thoughts come to our mind. Why is that? Q: How is one to keep happy and engaged, without external stimuli?

Does learning require thinking, or only awareness? To be aware is to be conscious, to be in relationship with what you observe outwardly and also our inward reactions. Awareness reveals that I have a conclusion from which I act, which prevents the free flow of energy. You see that you have many opinions and conclusions. You don't know why you have them or how to be free of them. Start with not knowing.

Though we have plenty of energy, apparently we lack the drive, enthusiasm, vitality to bring about a change in ourselves. As long as there is fear, there must be violence, aggression, anger, hatred. Thought is the source of fear. Is it possible to live everyday life without thought interfering? Thought is always old. When you worship thought, you are worshipping some thing that is dead.

We have accepted violence as a way of life and yet at the same time we want peace.

How does it happen that the deep layers hidden in consciousness can be exposed? Comparison between what is with what has been, and what will be, is the process of fear....

What is the relationship of the brain to the totality of the mind? Fear of not being, fear of isolation, fear of not having pleasure, fear of having no relationship, is the soil from which the stem of contradiction grows. I want to be free of this stem to see what happens if there is no attachment, no detachment, because I am not afraid. Is there a peace with no entity saying, ‘I am peaceful?'

Thought and the brain. Can the brain free itself from all self-delusion? Why has the self become important? Can there be only sensation, thought and no desire? Can desire—which brings illusion, self-deception and all the complications of changing desires—can the root of desire be dissipated? What prevents one from having a real insight? That is, seeing the truth of desire and therefore end it. Is it that we have never asked this question? When there is no desire whatsoever then there is a total revolution, and that will affect the consciousness of man.

A radical transformation in the psyche itself. 8 November 1968. Duration: 80 minutes. To communicate we must know that the word is not the thing and also be in that state of mind whose quality is attention, care. That can take place only if we are serious. We are the world, and the world is us. To bring about a radical transformation, which is so essential in society, there must be radical transformation in ourselves.

To look without a concept is to be aware of the observer and the thing observed. 20 May 1967. Duration: 88 minutes. Violence and sorrow are not limited to the West or the East; they are parts of the human structure psychologically. Is it possible to bring about a change radically, a total revolution in the psyche itself, not through time? The first and last freedoms are when the mind is totally free from concepts and the mechanical process of building a formula.

What is truth and what is reality? Anything that thought thinks about or reflects upon or projects, that is reality. And that reality has nothing to do with truth. The art of seeing is to place reality where it is, and not move that in order to get truth. You can’t get truth. How am I to empty that consciousness and yet retain knowledge – otherwise I couldn’t function – and reach a state which will comprehend reality?

Our education is concerned with the accumulation of knowledge. Very few of us are capable of living a life without the influence of specialists. What is the point of going to a university, getting a degree and disappearing into the vast structure of society? Q: How shall we approach the idea of study? If you express from something already accumulated it is a deadly bore, but if you are all the time watching, not only yourself but the world, you are learning.

Violence. Why do you control? Security means to be in a state in which there is no choice at all. The mind has become sensitive because it has observed, not because it has experienced. Either you see the fact with the past or you see the fact as it is now. The word is of the past.

Where there is authority there can be no discovery of something new. Relationship based on an idea cannot be a self-revealing process. Self-knowledge is understood, uncovered and its process revealed through relationship. Is it possible to love without the interference of the mind? When the mind becomes supreme, all-important, then there can be no affection. Q: what is that thinking that must come to an end? What do you mean by thinking and thought?

Is there a totally different way of approaching the whole turmoil of life? As long as the centre is creating darkness, and thought is operating in that darkness, there must be disorder, there must be everything as society now is. To move away from that, you must have insight. Insight can only come about when there is a flash which abolishes not only the darkness but the creator of darkness. Human beings have been acting according to one pattern, responding to hatred by hatred and so on. There are those few, perhaps many, who did not.

Fear. All the escaping and the strengthening of fear comes because we are inattentive. What is sleep? Find out....