Knowledge and Learning are two Different things: Eight Public Talks with Young People, Claremont Colleges, USA, 1968

Three Public Talks 1. 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 only take place 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. • Analysis of violence does not end violence, nor is violence ended by thinking of non-violence. • There is no teacher outside, no saviour, no master; you yourself have to change and therefore you have to learn to observe, to know yourself. • Knowledge and learning are two different things. • Q: What is this silence you talk about? The silence that I am experiencing comes and goes. 2. Thought is the cause of fear - 10 November 1968 Duration: 76 minutes • 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. • Q: Could you discuss the process of verbalisation that goes on when one observes? • Q: How do we get rid of this separation, division in ourselves? 3. The benediction of meditation - 17 November 1968 Duration: 67 minutes • We shall explore together into this life, existence, in which is included relationship, love and death, not merely as a phenomenon but as something tremendously significant, to be cherished, deeply lived. Meditation is the approach to this problem of living. • It is only a free mind that is capable of attention in which there is no achieving or losing or fear. It is only a quiet, attentive mind that can understand this immense problem of living. It is only the quiet, meditative mind that can come upon what is called love. • What is living? • The observer cannot possibly do anything about envy because he is the cause and the effect. Whatever he does with regard to envy is still envy. • What does it mean to die, knowing the organism comes to an end? What does it mean to die psychologically, inwardly? Five Public Discussions 4. Freedom of choice is not freedom - 11 November 1968 Duration: 83 minutes • What do we mean by free will? Is there such thing? • Is choice ever necessary? • Freedom exists only when I perceive very clearly, when the mind sees things as they are. • Q: Is it possible to be free in society? • Q: Is love the absence of hate? • To find out what truth is you must be free of propaganda: the propaganda of the Church, the propaganda of literature, propaganda of tradition, so that you see things clearly for yourself. 5. Learning is action - 12 November 1968 Duration: 56 minutes • 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. • Q: You say that a mantra is an escape. Do you think that people use drugs as an escape or because they want to become closer? • When I observe myself I cannot learn if I condemn what I find. • We observe through our imagination, through our image, through our knowledge. 6. Is it possible to end the thousand yesterdays? - 13 November 1968 Duration: 88 minutes • Living together amicably, creatively, in complete relationship with one another – if that is what is essential then we need not only a different kind of mind but also a different quality of affection, love. • What is the function of a religious mind? • Our struggle in life is dualistic: good and bad, right and wrong, holy and unholy, the ideal and the fact. There is only the fact, not the ideal. • Is it possible to look at life as though you are looking for the first time? • What is the content of the unconscious? It is the racial residue, the traditional, the family, the personal. It is as trivial as the conscious mind. • Q: It seems to me that the ‘I’, the ego only exists in relation to other things. Could you comment on this? • The impossible becomes possible only when you discard the impossibility of it. To find out anything you must go beyond the impossible. • Q: What do you mean by meditation? • There is no ‘how’. 7. Can the mind be free of thought? - 14 November 1968 Duration: 80 minutes • What is a human being to do living in this world which is extraordinarily confused, contradictory, fragmentary? • Life is relationship in action. • There is a division, a dualistic process between ‘what is’ and ‘what should be’. In this division there must be conflict. • Is it possible to live so utterly, completely, totally in the now that whatever I do will be total, complete, non-fragmentary, harmonious? • Can the mind be completely and totally silent, and out of that silence act? • Q: The ego is so strong. It thrives on its own activity. Will it allow itself to be destroyed? • Q: When you speak about memory being at different levels, is there really any difference between technological memory and other memory? • Q: Living in the now, how can you submit to a contract, which is a promise for the future? • The ending of sorrow is meditation, therefore meditation is wisdom. 8. The mind that is free of authority is a very intense, alive mind - 15 November 1968 Duration: 77 minutes • Can a mind be free of authority so that there is no impingement of the past, so that the mind is always alert, learning in the present? • Can the mind experience, go through a challenge so completely that it leaves no mark? • The mind must purge itself of the social morality in order to be moral. • Has experience any value at all? • Attention is the highest form of the good. • What is the relationship between two human beings when there are no images? • What is wisdom?

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