BENGALURU: We human beings, wherever we live, in Far East, the Near East and here, we are incapable of reading the whole story of mankind which is ourselves. And is it possible for us to read this book which has been handed down generation after generation for many, many millennia, to read the story which we are? Not leave one chapter under... unread, but read from the beginning to the end, the whole movement of mankind, and his evolution, both physically and psychologically, inwardly.
If we are able to read this book, which is astonishingly entertaining - if I may use that word - fascinating, and opens the door to enormous possibilities. So as we are the rest of mankind, psychologically, and if we know how to read this book, then perhaps we shall be able to alter the course of our lives.
Because that is what we are concerned with - at least the speaker is concerned about that, to bring about a radical transformation of the human mind and so bring about a good society: a society where we shall have order, peace, some kind of security, some kind of happiness, and go beyond all that, enquiring into that which is immeasurable.
So we must first, it seems to us, learn how to read this book. So we must find out how to observe, not only visually but observe the whole movement of our consciousness, of ourselves, with all our complexities, with all our anxieties, fears, pleasures, joys, accumulated superstitions, both the superstitions of the scientists, of the psychologists, of the religious people, and the whole thing, to be able to read very, very, very precisely, clearly and without any mistake.
And that’s what we are going to do this morning, if we can: learn - not that I am your instructor, we are doing this together - learn how to look in this extraordinary book, which is the self, which is the ego, the personality, the tendency, the characteristics, the impulses, the inhibitions, all that, which is our consciousness, to read that. And to read it one must have eyes and ears which are not dull, which are not blocked, which are not caught up in some kind of fanciful illusions - as most people are.