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