Inward Revolution Bringing About Radical Change in the World

find that your mind facing this emptiness becomes completely alone. And you
can only observe it if your mind is quiet. But the moment you condemn it, the
moment you say, “I must not chatter,” then you have conflict, and all the ugly
things begin.
You know there is a difference between loneliness and aloneness. Loneliness
is isolation, total isolation, which is what you are during daily life. During your
daily activity you are isolating yourself. You may be married, you may sleep
with your wife or not, or whoever you sleep with, but what takes place? You
have your own ambitions, your own greed, your own problems, and she has her
own problems, and you are trying to establish a relationship between various
problems. So the self-centered activity is loneliness. The self-centered activity is
isolating, and therefore there is the sense of appalling, frightening loneliness.
When you understand this, you have that aloneness which comes when the mind
and the brain cells have understood this whole problem. Which is, the denial of
all authority—all spiritual authority, not legal authority. If you do not pay tax you
will be taken to prison.
One has, unfortunately, to obey laws. To change laws—which you have
made—you have to change yourself. See the logic of it. By throwing a bomb,
having a physical revolution, you are not going to change the human mind. When
you bring about physical revolution you are bound to have bureaucratic
dictatorship or the dictatorship of the few. But we are talking about the authority
of another or the authority of your own accumulated knowledge as experience,
which is the past. When you discard all authority in yourself totally, when you
are no longer following any system, and when you have understood fear,
pleasure, then you have understood order. And in the understanding of fear and
pleasure there is joy. Joy has nothing whatsoever to do with pleasure. You may
have a moment of great joy but thinking about it reduces it to pleasure.
You have to understand yourself, which is all this, not the higher-self. There
is no higher-self. The higher-self is part of yourself; only thought has built it a
little higher. The Atman is still thought sitting like the guru on a little mattress;
and you think he is going to guide your life, which is sheer nonsense because
then you have conflict between the lower and the higher, and all that childish
stuff.
Understanding order comes with the understanding of the disorder that is your
life. Order is not a blueprint—virtue is a living thing, like humility. You cannot
cultivate humility. So when all this is done, the mind becomes extraordinarily
clear, unconfused. And therefore it is alone because other minds are confused,
other minds are in sorrow. Out of this aloneness there is a quality of silence,
which is not the result of practice. It is not the opposite of noise. That silence is
without cause, and therefore it has no beginning and no end. Such a mind is
absolutely orderly and therefore completely alone, and therefore innocent. It can
never be hurt.
And out of this comes a marvelous silence. And what happens in that silence
there are no words to describe. There are no words. If you describe what
happens, then those words are not the thing. What is described, the description, is