Public Talks
1. What is the operation of thought? - 14 July 1974
Duration: 84 minutes
• In the world around us and inside us, is there a relationship between the inner
and the outer?
• Are you free to listen or do you listen with interpretation and prejudices?
• Do I observe the content of my consciousness as an outsider? Can one observe
the content without choice?
• If you look with eyes that are divided is there not conflict between you and
another?
• Is division between the observer and the observed?
• Is it intelligent for thought to create and maintain division while talking about
peace?
• Is there an intelligence which is not cunning and is not the function or result of
thought?
Questions from the audience followed the talk.
2. Is there energy not based on idea or ideology? - 16 July 1974
Duration: 84 minutes
• Why is thought divisive?
• The desire to change in a particular direction gives an energy that is divisive.
• Will you free the mind taking time, through analysis, or can you look totally and
therefore be totally free?
• Does choiceless rejection of the false give a different kind of energy?
• Does a foundation give me direction or does it bring confusion?
• Is the operation of intelligence insight?
Questions from the audience followed the talk.
3. Can thought bring order? - 18 July 1974
Duration: 87 minutes
• Are thoughts, feelings, reactions and relationships merely mechanical? Is there
any other movement?
• Where there is a cause there is time and so living becomes relative.
• Is my relationship with another based on opinions, memories, demands and
sexual appetites?
• Is there a way of living which has no cause?
• Do I actually see disorder or only its description?
• Is it only when the ‘me’ is non-existent that I am related?
• What takes place when the mind has order and a sense of total relationship?
• Can the mind be free of the word to look and discover its disorder?
Questions from the audience followed the talk.
4. Can the mind not be a slave to knowledge? - 21 July 1974
Duration: 93 minutes
• When consciousness invents a super-consciousness is it a part of thought
aware of the past?
• Is there a part of the brain which has not been touched by the known?
• Is it our education to escape from ‘what is’ through ideals?
• Has the mind been trained to operate and function in the field of the known?
• Observing the movement of thought and its source, can one come upon some
thing beyond thought?
• Is time required to see the reality and non-reality of knowledge?
Questions from the audience followed the talk.
5. Wisdom comes through the understanding of suffering - 23 July 1974
Duration: 86 minutes
• Do we respond to the whole field of existence? Must not there be love to do
that?
• To love, to be responsible for the whole, one must go beyond suffering.
• Can we know the nature, structure and function of suffering?
• Is isolation one of the major causes of suffering?
• Is attachment, which denies freedom, a cause of suffering?
• In the love of the whole the particular comes in, but not the other way around.
• Can we be sensitive to beauty if we are psychologically hurt?
• Can the mind be aware of hurt and not react at the conscious or unconscious
level?
Questions from the audience followed the talk.
6. Are you seeking security in a concept? - 25 July 1974
Duration: 80 minutes
• Love and compassion is denied totally when you seek security in neurotic
concepts.
• Is there permanent security in relationship?
• The mind is sane, healthy, whole and acts totally when it realizes there is
nothing permanent.
• What is the relationship of time to thought? Does the mind need time to
transform itself?
• What is your relationship to death? Is it romantic or is it a total relationship?
• Knowing nothing about an unconditioned mind, can you look at conditioning
without the movement of its opposite?
Questions from the audience followed the talk.