Inward Revolution Bringing About Radical Change in the World

socialist, a Muslim, a Buddhist, creates tremendous conflict? You see that, don’t
you? How do you see it, verbally or as an actual fact of danger? Do you see that
as long as you are a Hindu, a communist, that very fact must bring about division
and that division is conflict? Intellectually I recognize it; intellectually I say that
is so. But there I stop; action doesn’t come from it. I don’t completely cease to be
a Hindu with all that tradition, all the conditioning, the culture. That doesn’t
cease because I am hearing the words intellectually without the perception of
danger.
Why is there no perception of that in the same way that you perceive a danger
and act instantly? Why don’t you? You know what is happening in the world: the
black against the white, the communist against the capitalist, the laborer against
somebody else, the Catholic against the Protestant though both worship what
they call Jesus Christ. There is linguistic, national, cultural division. There is
conflict, and out of this conflict there is war, both inwardly and outwardly. A
person who is really serious wants to find a way of living where there is no
conflict at all, no conflict at the very root of his being. He has to find out for
himself not intellectually, not verbally, but actually, if there is an action that is
not of time.
Now, when the speaker is going into it, don’t follow him, for then you
become his stupid disciple. When we are inquiring together, you are sharing the
thing. When the speaker is going into it, explaining, don’t be caught by the
words, by the explanations, because the explanation is not the explained. You
may be very hungry, and if I tell you what lovely food there is, that won’t satisfy
you; you have to share it, eat it.
We will begin at a very objective level. Can you see anything without an
image, see a tree without the image, without knowledge, without thought coming
between the observer and the observed and saying, “That is a mango tree”? Just
observe? Have you ever done it? That is, seen without verbalization?
Verbalization is the process of thinking. Can you observe a tree, your neighbor,
your wife or your boyfriend or girlfriend without the image? You can’t, can you?
Can you so observe your wife (which is a little more difficult than observing a
tree)?
You can observe a tree fairly easily without the image, without the word,
without thought. When you observe that tree without the whole mechanism of
thought coming into operation, then the space between you and the tree, which is
time, disappears. This doesn’t mean you become the tree or you identify yourself
with the tree. You see the tree completely, not partially. Then there is only the
tree, without the observer. Do you understand this? You have never done it. Do
it; not try to do it, do it. That is, observe the flower, the cloud, the bird, the light
on the water, the movement of the breeze among the leaves; just watch it without
any image. Then you will see that there is a relationship which has never existed
before between that which is observed and the observer, because then the
observer comes totally to an end. Let us leave that for the moment.
Now, observe your wife or your friend without the image. Do you know how
difficult it is? You have the image of your wife or your husband or somebody.
That image has been built through time. You have lived with your wife sexually;