Inward Revolution Bringing About Radical Change in the World

comes from a Latin word which means “incapable of being hurt.” Most of us are
hurt, with all the memories that we have accumulated around those hurts. Our
remorses, our longings, our loneliness, our fears are part of this sense of being
hurt. From childhood, consciously or unconsciously, we are hurt. How is one to
empty all that hurt without taking time, without saying, “Well, gradually, I will
get rid of this hurt”? When you do that, you will never end it. You would be dead
by the end of it.
Does all this interest you? All this is meditation and much more—whether the
mind can empty itself completely, not only at the superficial level but also at the
very depths of its being, at its very roots. Because otherwise one lives in a prison,
one lives in the prison of cause and effect in this world of change.
So you must ask yourself whether your mind can be completely empty of all
its past and yet retain technological knowledge, engineering knowledge,
scientific knowledge, bureaucratic knowledge, linguistic knowledge in order to
function. The emptying of the mind comes about naturally, sweetly, without
bidding, when you understand yourself, when you understand what you are.
What you are is memory, a bundle of memories, experiences, thoughts. Look at
it; observe it. And when you observe it, see that in that observation there is no
duality as the observer and the observed. Then when you see that, you will see
that your mind can be completely empty, attentive. And in that attention you can
act wholly, without any fragmentation. All this is part of meditation. It is not just
sitting in a corner five minutes a day and going off into some kind of idiotic
conflict with yourself, twisting your head, or breathing. Those are all too
infantile, exactly like candlelight in the sun.
So you understand totally the whole fragmentation of yourself—not its
integration. You understand how this fragmentation arises and its contradictions,
not how to bring it together. You can’t. To bring it together implies a duality—
the one who is bringing about integration. When you really, deeply, profoundly
understand yourself, learn about yourself, then you can understand the meaning
of time, the time that binds, that holds, that brings sorrow.
If you have gone that far—not verbally far, not measurably far, not far in
height or depth—in understanding, with fullness, then you will find out for
yourself a dimension which has no description, which has no word, which is not
something to be bought through sacrifice, which is not in any book, which no
guru can ever experience. A guru wants to teach you about it and how to reach it,
but when he says he has experienced that and knows what that is, he has not
experienced it, he does not know what it is. The man who says he knows does
not know. So a mind must be free of the word, the image, the past. And that is
the first step and the last step.