CHENNAI : All human problems are interrelated; there is no separate, isolated problem by itself. And in this there is neither West nor East. Human problems are common to all mankind whether one is born in India, Russia, America or England. We are apt to consider one problem isolated from other problems instead of understanding the totality of all problems. And this can only be done if we are capable, earnest enough to investigate, to go deeply into one problem; then we shall see that all the other problems are related to it. And this is rather important to understand; there is no problem by itself, every problem is related to all the other problems and we have, as human beings, innumerable problems. Apparently whatever we touch becomes a problem.
You know exactly what is happening in the world; throughout society there is a tremendous amount of violence, uncertainty and fear, a form of organised, flourishing anarchy. Society has become a structure in which there are wars, separate religions and different nationalities, each in conflict with the other. And all over the world man has lost faith; he no longer trusts anybody, neither the priests nor the politicians, nobody, not even his own parents because the older generation has created such a monstrous society, a world in which there is constant war, insecurity and therefore fear.
Religion, whether it is the religion of this country, of India or the far East, which is Buddhism, has no meaning any more. And although the priests in all the organised religions talk everlastingly about being kind, loving, in the name of God, in the name of Christ, in the name of all manner of deity, the fact remains that there is a great deal of envy, hatred, greed, brutality, antagonism and violence. So man is beginning to realise that there is no one he can turn to, no one to help him out of this chaos and misery.
Ideologies have very little meaning. Whether you believe in God, or do not believe, is surely a matter of conditioning. In India or elsewhere — except in Russia and the communist world — the church through 2,000 years of propaganda has conditioned man to believe in God, in a saviour. And in the communist world they are conditioned not to believe in all that nonsense. So, through propaganda, through clever intellectual groups throughout the world - in the past as well as in the present - human beings are being conditioned by words, by various formulas, by ideologies which divide societies, the capitalist ideology and the communist ideology.
The world is not only divided religiously but nationally as Italy, France, America, Russia and so on. Ideologies are always absurd, idiotic; they have no meaning whatsoever.
The thing that has meaning and is of great significance is what is - not what should be or what might have been in the past.