Can Thought Be Silent?: Four Public Talks (Unabridged‪)‬

Can the mind be free? 3 February 1969. Duration: 99 minutes.
The society in which we live is the result of our psychological state. Where there is fear there is aggression. For most of us, freedom is something that we don’t want. Inaction is total action.

What is the machinery that builds images? Questions from the audience followed the talk.
Thought sustains fear and pleasure. 4 February 1969. Duration: 67 minutes.

To understand relationship and to end the conflict in it is our entire problem. Can man live at peace within himself and outwardly? In relationship one becomes aware of the actual state of oneself. The man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free man, a peaceful man.

What is fear? Can thought be silent? Conduct becomes virtuous only when thought doesn’t cultivate what it considers virtue. How is it possible to look at the sunset without thought weaving pleasure or pain around it? Questions from the audience follow the talk.
Life, death and love. 5 February 1969. Duration: 69 minutes.

What is it that we call living? How can a confused mind find somebody who will tell the truth? When there is no comparison, no opposite, and you are actually faced with the fact of anger, then is there anger?

Without knowing what sorrow is, understanding its nature and structure, we shall not know what love is. What is it to die? One is never afraid of the unknown; one is afraid of the known coming to an end.

It is only the mind that has shed all its burdens every day, ended every problem, that is an innocent mind. Then life has a different meaning altogether. Then one can find out what love is.
True revolution. 6 February 1969. Duration: 67 minutes.
What is a religious mind? Must one go to an expert to tell us what the unconscious is, or can one find it for oneself? Through the negation of disorder, order comes into being. It is only the meditative mind that can find out, not the curious mind or the mind that is everlastingly searching.

To meditate implies to see very clearly. It is not possible to see clearly when there is space between the observer and the thing observed. It is only in silence that there is quite a different dimension. You have to find out for yourself; nobody can open the door for you.