Inward Revolution Bringing About Radical Change in the World

promises something, religious or otherwise. Seeing this not only outwardly but
also inwardly, what can a human being do?
You are the world and the world is you. You are the result of your culture, of
your society, of your religion. You have been nurtured in the society, in the
culture which you have built, and therefore you are part of that. You are not
separate from the culture, from the society, from the community. Again, that is a
fact. The majority of you probably believe in God because you have been
brought up in a society, in a culture, that believes in God. And if you are born in
Russia or in a communist society, where they don’t believe in God, you would be
conditioned not to believe, as you are conditioned here to believe. So you are the
result of the society in which you live, and you, your grandfathers, the past
generations have created that society. So you as a human being, facing all this of
which you are a part, must inevitably ask, “What is the right action, what is one
to do?” Please ask that question yourself; don’t let the speaker suggest the
question. What is one to do?
First of all, can you as a human being follow what another says? We need a
total change, a deep revolution, a psychological revolution, an inward revolution,
without which you cannot possibly create a new society. I wonder if you are
interested in all this. You are really interested in being told what you should do.
You are really interested in finding a safe path, because you have never exercised
your own brain to find out how to live rightly. You repeat, and from now on one
thing that you can really do is never to repeat what you do not know. Never do
anything that you do not understand—you yourself—not your gurus, your
saviors, your religious books, but what you yourself understand. Do you know
what would happen to you? You would no longer be secondhand human beings.
Then you would put aside all the gurus, all the religious books; you would never
follow anybody. Then you would be acting exactly with facts, not with
suppositions, not with formulas. Do try it; do it one day. Never repeat what you
do not understand logically, sanely. Never do something that you yourself have
not directly tested. Then you will see that you would be faced with actualities,
not with ideals, not with formulas, not with conclusions, but actually with what
is—which is yourself.
So you see all the contradictions in yourself and in the world. When you see,
observe, in yourself the great sorrow that you have, the despair, the agony, the
suffering, the loneliness, the utter lack of love, the callousness, the brutality, the
violence, then you ask, “What is one to do?” The question of what to do is not
important at all. What is important is how you observe these facts, how you look
at these facts; not what you do about the facts, but how you as a human being
look at this tremendously complex problem of existence, the complex society, the
immorality of this present structure of society—how you look at them, not what
you do about them. I will explain.
You cannot act before you have understood, before you have seen. So first
you must see, you must observe, you must perceive. Now, how do you perceive?
Please remember we are sharing together, we are learning together. You are not
being taught by the speaker. The speaker has nothing to teach you because you
have to learn for yourself by understanding actually what is. So the first question