There Is insight when thought is absent: Fourteen public Meetings Saanen Switzerland 1972

Public Talks

1. Can I see wholly? - 16 July 1972

Duration: 71 minutes

• Do we act casually, expecting division to end as a result of outer environment?

• Does change demand immediate attention and action?

• Freeing of the mind from conditioning and in that freedom bringing about a

cooperative action.

• Can one who is conditioned by the past change totally?

• Will change come through analysis or is there a totally different approach?

• Is time needed to have relationship in which there is love and not division?

• Does one of the many fragments of the ‘me’ assume authority or is the mind

free to look?

• Observation not investigation.

• Is there analysis if there are no parts? Is analysis a waste of time?

Questions from the audience followed the talk.

2. What is it to be creative? - 18 July 1972

Duration: 76 minutes

• Not being deeply creative we escape from the fact of deep frustration.

• Is there insight only when the mind is free of belief?

• Insight without conclusion is creative action.

• Why does thought draw conclusions from insight and cling to the structure of

control?

• I am isolated when I resist. Is aloneness insight into isolation?

• Moving in insight, relationship changes.

• Freedom from images is responsibility and love.

• The brain needs security to function. There is security in insight, which brings

intelligence.

• When you don’t compare, what are you?

Questions from the audience followed the talk



3. Thought and its limitations - 20 July 1972

Duration: 85 minutes

• Can thought investigate something which is not of time, experience and

knowledge?

• What is the mind that can enter into the dimension which has no word?

• Can there be a harmony in which division does not exist between the known

and freedom from the known?

• Is the mind such a slave to words that it cannot see the movement of thought

without the word?

• Will knowledge bring about a better world when used with the ‘me’?

• When the body dies what happens to thought?

• If I am aware that I am neurotic, in that awareness am I neurotic?

Questions from the audience followed the talk





4. Can the mind be totally unconditioned? - 23 July 1972

Duration: 84 minutes

• Society, culture and economic divisions have created images in us.

• Can the deep hurts of the mind be wiped away so that no mark is left? Will this

be done through analysis? Who is analysing?

• Is hurt a problem if you do not move away from it?

• Does conflict destroy the brain?

• Is comparison an escape from ‘what is’?

• Am I the word, the description, the thought? If I don’t compare, what am I?

• Wanting to cross to the other side of the river becomes a problem.

Questions from the audience followed the talk

5. Will the discovery of the cause of suffering end it? - 25 July 1972

Duration: 83 minutes

• Is sorrow ignorance of oneself?

• How does one go beyond loneliness?

• Can thought as measurement put an end to itself?

• When belief is threatened there is fear.

• Can the brain have security in which every form of fear has come to an end?

• Can the mind realize there is no security in the things that thought projects?

• The perception of truth is security.

• Can the mind invite joy?

• Can one help another in crisis?

Questions from the audience followed the talk

6. Pleasure, joy and death - 27 July 1972

Duration: 92 minutes

• Does the mind have any existence apart from the thing to which it is attached?

• Why does the mind act from a series of conclusions of thought?

• How can I love you if I am attached to you?

• What is the actual activity of the structure of memory which is the past?

• Can the mind have an insight into conditioning and therefore tremendous

energy to change it?

• How do I communicate love without the word?

• Is there anything permanent beyond death?

Questions from the audience followed the talk

7. Religion and meditation - 30 July 1972

Duration: 88 minutes

• Why have we divided life into spirit and matter?

• Is religion based on the insights of a few who have established a church?

• How is the mind to bring about harmony, tremendous energy and clarity? Will

any act of desire bring it about?

• Is the controller different from the controlled?

• Why do you want any kind of experience?

• Can the mind and the brain be completely still? Can you know your mind is

quiet?

• Quietness implies space. Is there something immeasurable beyond thought?

• What job will one do if one is serious about life?

Questions from the audience followed the talk



Public Discussions

8. The observer and the observed - 2 August 1972

Duration: 93 minutes

• Q: How can I learn about myself?

• I want to learn about myself without conclusion because conclusion prevents

looking at the fact.

• There is the observer and the thing observed. When there is an observer there

must be division and conflict.

• I am not a harmonious whole, I am fragmented because I hate and love, I am

ambitious and greedy.

• The observer is the cause of division. How is the observer not to divide himself?

• Can the mind respond totally to every challenge so that there is no conflict and

therefore no observer?

9. The problem of existence - 3 August 1972

Duration: 81 minutes

• Q: What is the factor of distortion in life?

• Why does a human being who wants to live a harmonious life gradually go to

pieces?

• What is it that goes wrong? Is it duality: the good and the bad, love and hate?

• Are there opposites psychologically, or is there only one factor?

• A mind that is acting in the past or in the future, that is caught in nationalism or

religious beliefs, contributes to war.

10. Total attention - 4 August 1972

Duration: 90 minutes

• Q: Can one sustain total attention?

• When you observe the mountains, the trees or yourself with sufficient attention

and energy, the observer with all its conditioning is absent.

• Can one maintain this sense of total attention continuously?

• Be aware of inattention. Awareness of inattention is attention.

• We compare, measure, conform and identify with ideals.

• The more we identify with something that gives pleasure the more we are

attached to it.

• What takes place when there is no identification? We then deal with facts and

that gives tremendous vitality

11. Fragmentary action and total action - 5 August 1972

Duration: 81 minutes

• Discussion with young people

• How does youth respond to the modern challenge?

• Young people live and act fragmentarily. Do you see that this is unintelligent

action?

• How is the mind to acquire an intelligence that will act intelligently in all

things?

• Do you see for yourself the challenge that the house is burning, politically,

religiously, socially? How do you respond? Do you see it right away,

non-verbally?

• Why do we see things in words first? Words are ideas, thoughts, formulas

which then become a remembrance.

• There is an action which is totally complete when there is no ideation or

prejudice. Being young, can you listen with a mind that is young?

12. Conclusions prevent looking - 6 August 1972

Duration: 90 minutes

• Q: Is it possible to learn what observation is?

• Most of us live in ideas, beliefs and concepts. Why does the mind create

images, words, opinions and judgements?

• The mind is lazy. It is easier to live with an image than with a fact. How am I to

stop image-making?

• Looking at a tree as though for the first time, its beauty brings tears to your

eyes.

• See the hills and shadows as you have never seen them before. See your friend,

husband or wife for the first time.

• See yourself without any image and realize that you are nothing. In that there

is vast beauty. Then you will know what truth is

13. The sacred in life - 7 August 1972

Duration: 91 minutes

• Q: What is the significance of sleep, death, dreams and meditation?

• If life during the day is orderly, the brain is absolutely quiet. Sleep then is

without dreams and when the brain wakes up it has vitality.

• To see clearly the mind must be quiet. How is thought to be quiet?

• The mind empty of thought can use thought and live with thought in harmony.

This is meditation.

• That which is sacred is the moment when thought is not, the quality of mind

that is completely empty.

• Out of emptiness, space, silence thought can operate

14. Are you aware of your conditioning? - 8 August 1972

Duration: 77 minutes

• Is time needed to be free of conditioning?

• We use time as measure, both outwardly and inwardly. Is time necessary for

psychological understanding or to be free from habit?

• The mind is conditioned religiously, psychologically and socially. Does it take

time to break down conditioning?

• Our life is based on conditioning and becomes mechanical.

• We don’t want to go beyond the narrow field of conditioning and in that lies

sorrow.

• Is it possible at one glance to see the poisonous nature of all conditioning