BENGALURU: The social pattern is set up by man; it is not independent of man, though it has a life of its own, and man is not independent of it; they are interrelated. Change within the pattern is no change at all; it is mere modification, reformation. Only by breaking away from the social pattern without building another can you ‘help’ society. As long as you belong to society, you are only helping it to deteriorate. All societies, including the most marvelously utopian, have within them the seeds of their own corruption. To change society, you must break away from it.
We seem to forget that the world problem is the individual problem, that the problems of the world are created by you and me as individuals.The problems of war, starvation, exploitation, and all the other innumerable problems that confront each one of us are created by you and me, and as long as we do not understand ourselves at every level, we will maintain the rottenness of the present society.
Revolution must begin with you and me. That revolution, that individual transformation, can take place only when we understand relationship, which is the process of self-knowledge. Without knowing the whole process of my relationship at all the different levels, what I think and what I do has no value at all. What basis have I for thinking if I do not know myself? We are so desirous to act, so eager to do something, to bring some kind of revolution, some kind of amelioration.
Can this radical inward revolution happen instantly? It can happen instantly when you see the danger of all this. It is like seeing the danger of a precipice, of a wild animal, of a snake; then there is instant action. But we do not see the danger of all this fragmentation which takes place when the ‘self,’ the ‘me,’ becomes important and the fragmentation of the ‘me’ and the ‘not me.’ The moment there is that fragmentation in yourself there must be conflict; and conflict is the very root of corruption. So, it behooves one to find out for oneself the beauty of meditation, for then the mind, being free and unconditioned, perceives what is true.
What is true can only be found from moment to moment, it is not a continuity, but the mind which wants to discover it, being itself the product of time, can only function in the field of time; therefore it is incapable of finding what is true.To know the mind, the mind must know itself, for there is no ‘I’ apart from the mind. There are no qualities separate from the mind, just as the qualities of the diamond are not separate from the diamond itself. To understand the mind you cannot interpret it according to somebody else’s idea, but you must observe how your own total mind works.
When you know the whole process of it,how it reasons, its desires, motives, ambitions, pursuits, its envy, greed and fear; then the mind can go beyond itself, and when it does there is the discovery of something totally new. That quality of newness gives an extraordinary passion, a tremendous enthusiasm which brings about a deep inward revolution: and it is this inward revolution which alone can transform the world not any political or economic system.