excerpts

One sees that more and more, throughout the world, freedom is going. Politicians may talk about it. You can see prosperity, industrialization, education, the family, religion - all these are wiping away slowly, perhaps deliberately, all demand for freedom. That is a fact.

Whether you like it or not, it is an irrefutable fact, that education, propaganda, industrialization, prosperity and so-called religion which is really propaganda, the continuous repetition of tradition - all these are conditioning the mind so heavily, so deeply, that freedom is practically gone... We must break it; otherwise, we are not human beings, we are mere machines recording certain pressures and strains.

So we must face the fact that through deliberate propaganda, through various pressures man is being denied freedom. There is the whole mechanism of propaganda - religious propaganda, political propaganda, the propaganda that is being done by certain political parties and so on and so on. The constant repetition of phrases or words means constant dinning into the mind of certain ideas which are destroying the mind, controlling the mind, shaping the mind according to the phrases of the propagandists. That is a fact.

Because, when you call yourself a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Chinese or whatever you like, it is the result of your being told over and over again, for centuries, that you are a Hindu, that you have a vast tradition which has been shaping the mind - which makes you react as a Hindu according to certain established practices, by tradition.

Please see this. Don`t accept or deny, because I am not out to do any propaganda or to convince you of anything; but I really think, if we could come together and intellectually, rationally observe certain facts, then out of that observation of facts a change will come about, which is not predetermined by a conditioned mind.

To see a fact purely is all-important and not to try to change the fact according to the pattern, or the condition in which one has been brought up, because such a change is predetermined and creates another pattern to which the mind becomes a slave.

So it is very important to see the fact as it is and not bring an opinion, an idea, a judgment and an evaluation upon the fact, because the evaluation, the judgment, the opinion is conditioned, it is the result of the past, it is the result of your culture, of the society in which you have been brought up.

So if you look at the fact through the background of your culture, of your society, of your beliefs, then you are not looking at the fact. You are merely projecting what you believe, what you have experienced, what your background is, upon the fact. Therefore, it is not a fact. Please bear that very clearly in mind. This pure act of observation, seeing a thing very clearly without distortion, brings about a challenge to which you have to respond totally, and a total response frees the mind from the conditioning.

... if you approach the fact with an opinion, a judgment, an evaluation, that is positive thinking, which destroys the fact. If I want to understand something, I must look at it and not have an opinion about it. That is a very simple fact. If I want to understand what you are saying, I must listen to you attentively. I will agree or disagree at the end, but I must listen to it. I must gather everything that you have said from the beginning to the end and not mere bits here and there. You must listen to the totality of what is being said and then you can decide, if there is a decision to be made; you will not then choose but will merely see the fact...

To understand the fact, you must come to it inquisitively not positively. The positive mind, the positive attitude is one of determined opinion, a conditioned outlook, with a traditional point of view which is established, to which you automatically respond. It is positive thinking which most of us indulge in. You see something of national freedom or you refer to the Gita, the Upanishads or some other book, and respond; you respond according to what somebody has thought out for you or said what you should think about the fact. The book, the professor, the guru, the teacher and the ancient wise people or group - those have done all the work of thinking and have written down, and you just repeat them when you meet a fact; and you're meeting the fact with a traditional outlook, with a conditioned response, is called positive thinking - which is no thinking at all.

Every electronic machine [that is, a computer which is programmed] does this if it has already been told what to think; when it is given certain problems to solve, it will respond automatically...

So, when an opinion is given about a fact, it is not thinking at all. It is merely responding, the response being conditioned by previous experience.

Please see what I am saying. It is something entirely different from that to which you are accustomed. Because you and I are looking now at a fact without an opinion. I will show you something. There is a way, a botanical way of looking at a flower. You know the botanical way - to look at the whole structure of the flower in a scientific way. There is a way of looking at the flower, without referring to knowledge - to look at the flower purely, directly, without the intervention, without the screen of what we know...

To understand you as a human being, I cannot say, "You are a Hindu", "You are that", "You are this; I must study, I must look at you without an opinion, without an evaluation, as a scientist does."

... you are so used to the so-called positive thinking. The Gita or the Upanishads says this, your guru says this, your traditional family education has told you this; and with the machinery of your memory, with that accumulated knowledge, you look at something and respond to what you see - that is what you call thinking. I do not think that it is thinking at all.

It is merely the repetition of memory and the response of memory. It is conditioned by the past, by the culture, by society, by religious experience, by education, by the book; and that machinery is set going when you meet a fact and that machinery responds: and so it is sheer nonsense. But if you can approach a fact negatively - which is to look at it and not bring your opinion or knowledge to condemn or to condition it, you keep on looking at the fact, purely.