One sees or understands only when the mind is quiet.: Eight Public Meetings - Amsterdam The Netherlands 1967

1. 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; it is part 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 freedom is when the mind is totally free from concepts and

the mechanical process of building a formula.

• It is an art to look, which is much more important than any art in the world, any

painting, music or book; because when we can look so totally and completely,

being directly in contact, there is an ending.

• Q: If one has cancer, how can one be free from death?

2. Where there is pleasure there is the shadow of pain - 21 May 1967

Duration: 83 minutes

• The whole movement of living, which is relationship, is a movement in action.

• What is consciousness? When do you say, ‘I am conscious, I am aware, I am

attentive’?

• Is there actually a division between the conscious and the unconscious, or it is

a total movement, operating all the time?

• The mind that pursues pleasure must inevitably invite its opposite, which is

pain. The two go together; they are not separate.

• You cannot see totally when you are making effort.

• Q: If you love your own child, your attention to your child is fairly complete, but

if you are a teacher you cannot give attention to all the students.

3. Is it possible to renew the mind? - 24 May 1967

Duration: 81 minutes

• When the mind is living through imagination and thought, it is incapable of

living in the complete fullness of the present.

• Thought has created time, not chronological time but psychological time. That

is, ‘I will be,’ ‘I should be.’

• Is it possible for the brain to be quiet, to give an interval between the old and

the new? This interval is the timeless nature in which thought cannot possibly

enter.

• That which has continuity is repetitive, which is time. It’s only when time

comes to an end there is something new taking place.

• To die every day to every problem, every pleasure, and not carry over any

problem at all; so the mind remains tremendously attentive, active, clear.

• Since love is not desire or pleasure, how does one come upon it?

• Q: Is the feeling of responsibility a part of the order and discipline you were

talking about?

• Q: Why don’t people get angry with what you are saying?

4. Can thought stop? - 28 May 1967

Duration: 72 minutes

• When there is a process of recognition it is the projection of the past. The mind

is always functioning within the field of time, which is of memory. Can the

mind go beyond that?

• What is pleasure and what is desire?

• How is it possible, without control, subjugation or denying, for thought not to

allow itself to interfere?

• When all authority of every kind is put aside, denied, then you can find out for

yourself.

• When you are completely attentive, you see. It is only love that sees - not

thought, the mind or the intellect. One has to learn how to look, how to hear.

• Q: Could you distinguish between what you mean by the word ‘recognizing’

and ‘being aware’?

• Q: How is one to break off a concept that one has carefully built?

5. It is only a very silent mind that can actually see - 30 May 1967

Duration: 82 minutes

• Conflict exists only when there are two opposing things: fear and non-fear,

violence and non-violence.

• A mind that is in a state of inquiry is entirely different from a mind that is

seeking. Seeking implies effort, conformity, authority and therefore conflict.

• Without space in which there is no boundary, the mind is incapable of coming

upon immeasurable reality.

• It is only a silent mind that can perceive, actually see, not a chattering mind, a

controlled mind, a mind that is tortured, suppressed, yielding or indulging.

• When one has totally denied the psychological world which man has created,

and the psychological structure of society of which we are, then there is space

and silence.

• Q: Could you define contemplation and meditation?

• Q: It is not possible ever to observe totally one’s own irrational thoughts.

• Q: What does it mean to stand alone?

6. What does it mean to be totally free? - 24 May 1967

Duration: 96 minutes

• What takes place when one falls in love?

• Why has sex taken on such extraordinary importance?

• How will you know that it is stupid to be a nationalist?

• You see or understand only when the mind is quiet, when you are aware

without any choice.

• When I say, ‘I love you,’ I have blocked myself from looking at you. Is it possible

to look totally impersonally and yet be completely intimate?

• One takes a drug and has an extraordinary experience. At the base of this is the

demand for wider and deeper experiences. Why do you want experience?

7. When one observes a fact without knowledge then one can learn - 28 May 1967

Duration: 82 minutes

• Why do we dream at all?

• Isn’t dreaming at night a waste of energy, when the brain needs to be

completely at rest?

• When do you actually learn?

• When I learn through Freud about myself I am not observing myself, I am

observing the image which Freud has created about me.

• Can you do nothing, psychologically?

• If two people are quarrelling and one stops, what takes place?

• The more we talk together, the more we communicate together, the clearer it

becomes.

8. Is there such thing as free will? - 31 May 1967

Duration: 80 minutes

• Is freedom partial?

• Why should I be bound to destiny? Born in India with the tremendous cultural

traditions, why should I be caught in it?

• Man is more important than the frame into which he is put.

• Is it possible for a human being to free himself from society, psychologically?

• Human beings have to change, and will thought change us?

• Man is society, has created the society in which we live.

• Are you influenced to change from outside or do you change from yourself?

• To change according to a pattern is no change at all.