We are not individuals at all; we are the result of the collective. You are the result of your society, of the religion, the education, the climate, the food, the clothes, the tradition in which you have been brought up – you are all that. And to think that you are an individual is really quite absurd if you go very deeply into the matter. You may have a name, a different body, a bank account, certain superficial qualities, but essentially, deep down, the totality of the mind is conditioned by the society in which it has been brought up. To be aware of such conditioning and to break through that, break through the encrustation of centuries of the past, it is that quality, that intensity, that understanding that brings about individuality. And it is only the individual that can find out what is the real, not the collective. From Public Talk 1, New Delhi, 21 January 1962 Read more |