Inward Revolution Bringing About Radical Change in the World

effectively, objectively, in the technological world, and you also see the danger
of thought. So a question arises from that, What is the entity that holds the
thought?
Please understand that this is not mass therapy. It is on the part of each human
being that we are examining these facts. We asked what it is that holds this
memory as a center from which it operates. Have you observed that there is in
you an observer and the thing observed? The observer is the censor, is the
accumulated knowledge as a Christian, as a Hindu, as a Buddhist, as a
communist, and so on. The observer is the center, is the ego, is the “me.” That
“me,” that ego, thinking, invents a superego, the Atman, but it is still part of
thought invented by somebody. So, if you observe in yourself, there is the
observer, the censor, and the thing you look at which is the observed. So there is
a duality as the observer and the observed, the “me” and the “you,” we Hindus
and they Muslims. So there is in you the observer and the observed. Watch it.
This division is the cause of all conflict. Whether you call it a higher-self, the
Atman, the Brahma, it is still division, just like national division, political
division, the division of function, division between you and your wife, between
you and your husband. Division must invariably create conflict. So there is in
you the fact of the observer and the observed, and the observer is the holder of all
memory from which all thought arises. So thought is never new; thought is never
free. It can think of or invent freedom, but it is never free.
So, how to observe without the observer? The observer is the past; the
observer is the image. Make it very simple and quick. You have an image about
your wife or your husband, haven’t you? Of course you have. That image has
been built up through time—the nagging, the bullying, offering pleasure and
denying it. Slowly after forty years or ten years or two days or one day or one
minute, the image has been built about your wife or your husband, your
boyfriend or girlfriend. The image-maker is the observer. We are asking if you
can observe your wife, the tree, or your husband without the image, without the
observer.
To find that out, you must find the machinery of image-building. What is it
that creates images? If you understand that, you will never create an image.
Therefore you can observe without the observer. It doesn’t matter if you are
following all this or not. It is fun at least for me to talk, to feel the beauty of it. If
you come to this with a fresh mind, with a mind that is not clouded, you see
something totally different every time. We are asking whether the image-maker,
the machinery of this image-making can ever come to an end. I will show you
how it can come to an end.
First of all, you have to inquire into what awareness is—to be aware of trees,
of your neighbor, of the shape of a room, of colors, aware outwardly and aware
inwardly of what is happening. To be aware choicelessly, not choosing, liking or
disliking. Just to be aware. Now, when you are so aware at the moment of insult
or flattery, at that moment the recording machine doesn’t operate. You insult me,
and at that moment of insult, if there is total awareness, there is no recording. I
don’t want to hit you; I don’t call you a name; the mind is just passively aware of
the insult or the flattery, and therefore there is no recording. Therefore there is no