To me, selfishness seems to come out of an instinct for self-preservation,
which is our deepest and first instinct.  How can we opt for
selflessness?  It would be almost like opting for non-being.  To me, it
would seem to be the same thing as non-being.  Whatever it is, I'm
saying:  Stop feeling bad about being selfish; we're all the same.  Someone
once had a terribly beautiful thing to say about Jesus.  This person wasn't
even Christian.  He said, "The lovely thing about Jesus was that he was so
at home with sinners, because he understood that he wasn't one bit better
than they were."  We differ from others -- from criminals, for example --
only in what we do or don't do, NOT IN WHAT WE ARE.  The only difference
between Jesus and those others was that he was awake and they
weren't.  Look at people who win the lottery.  Do they say, "I'm so proud
to accept this prize, not for myself, but for my nation and my
society."  Does anybody talk like that when they win the
lottery?  No.  Because they were LUCKY, LUCKY.  So they won the lottery,
first prize.  Anything to be proud of in that?

In the same way, if you achieved enlightenment, you would do so in the
interest of self and you would be lucky.  Do you want to glory in
that?  What's there to glory about?  Can't you see how utterly stupid it is
to be vain about your good deeds?  The Pharisee wasn't an evil man, he was
a stupid man.  He was stupid, not evil.  He didn't stop to think.  Someone
once said, "I dare not stop to think, because if I did, I wouldn't know how
to get started again."

There's a story about Ramirez.  He is old and living up there in his castle
on a hill.  He looks out the window (he's in bed and paralyzed) and he sees
his enemy.  Old as he is, leaning on a cane, his enemy is climbing up the
hill -- slowly, painfully.  It takes him about two and a half hours to get
up the hill.  There's nothing Ramirez can do because the servants have the
day off.  So his enemy opens the door, comes straight to the bedroom, puts
his hand inside his cloak, and pulls out a gun.  He says, "At last,
Ramirez, we're going to settle scores!"  Ramirez tries his level best to
talk him out of it.  He says, "Come on, Borgia, you can't do that.  You
know I'm no longer the man who ill-treated you as that youngster years ago,
and you're no longer that youngster.  Come off it!"  "Oh no," says his
enemy, ''your sweet words aren't going to deter me from this divine mission
of mine.  It's revenge I want and there's nothing you can do about
it."  And Ramirez says, "But there is!"  "What?" asks his enemy.  "I can
wake up," says Ramirez.  And he did; he woke up!  That's what enlightenment
is like.  When someone tells you, "There is nothing you can do about it,"
you say, "There is, I can wake up!"  All of a sudden, life is no longer the
nightmare that it has seemed.  Wake up!

Somebody came up to me with a question.  What do you think the question
was?  He asked me, "Are you enlightened?"  What do you think my answer
was?  What does it matter!

You want a better answer?  My answer would be: "How would I know?  How
would you know?  What does it matter?"  You know something?  If you want
anything too badly, you're in big trouble.  You know something else?  If I
were enlightened and you listened to me because I was enlightened, then
you're in big trouble.  Are you ready to be brainwashed by someone who's
enlightened?  You can be brainwashed by anybody, you know.  What does it
matter whether someone's enlightened or not?  But see, we want to lean on
someone, don't we?  We want to lean on anybody we think has arrived.  We
love to hear that people have arrived.  It gives us hope, doesn't it?  What
do you want to hope for?  Isn't that another form of desire?

You want to hope for something better than what you have right now, don't
you?  Otherwise you wouldn't be hoping.  But then, you forget that you have
it all right now anyway, and you don't know it.  Why not concentrate on the
now instead of hoping for better times in the future?  Why not understand
the now instead of forgetting it and hoping for the future?  Isn't the
future just another trap?

Do you want to change the world?  How about beginning with yourself?  How
about being transformed yourself first?  But how do you achieve
that?  Through observation.  Through understanding.  With no interference
or judgment on your part.  Because what you judge you cannot understand.

When you say of someone, "He's a communist,"  understanding has stopped at
that moment.  You slapped a label on him.  "She's a
capitalist."  Understanding has stopped at that moment.  You slapped a
label on her, and if the label carries undertones of approval or
disapproval, so much the worse!  How are you going to understand what you
disapprove of, or what you approve of, for that matter?  All of this sounds
like a new world, doesn't it?  No judgment, no commentary, no attitude: one
simply observes, one studies, one watches, without the desire to change
what is.  Because if you desire to change what is into what you think
SHOULD be, you no longer understand.  A dog trainer attempts to understand
a dog so that he can train the dog to perform certain tricks.  A scientist
observes the behavior of ants with no further end in view than to study
ants, to learn as much as possible about them.  He has no other aim.  He's
not attempting to train them or get anything out of them.  He's interested
in ants, he wants to learn as much as possible about them.  That's his
attitude.  The day you attain a posture like that, you will experience a
miracle.  You will change ­ effortlessly, correctly.  Change will happen,
you will not have to bring it about.  As the life of awareness settles on
your darkness, whatever is evil will disappear.  Whatever is good will be
fostered.  You will have to experience that for yourself.

But this calls for a disciplined mind.  And when I say disciplined, I'm not
talking about effort.  I'm talking about something else.  Have you ever
studied an athlete.  His or her whole life is sports, but what a
disciplined life he or she leads.  And look at a river as it moves toward
the sea.  It creates its own banks that contain it.  When there's something
within you that moves in the right direction, it creates its own
discipline.  The moment you get bitten by the bug of awareness.  Oh, it's
so delightful!  It's the most delightful thing in the world; the most
important, the most delightful.  There's nothing so important in the world
as awakening.  Nothing!  And, of course, it is also discipline in its own way.

There's nothing so delightful as being aware.  Would you rather live in
darkness?  Would you rather act and not be aware of your actions, talk and
not be aware of your words?  Would you rather listen to people and not be
aware of what you're hearing, or see things and not be aware of what you're
looking at?  The great Socrates said, "The unaware life is not worth
living."  That's a self-evident truth.  Most people don't live aware
lives.  They live mechanical lives, mechanical thoughts -- generally
somebody else's -- mechanical emotions, mechanical actions, mechanical
reactions.  Do you want to see how mechanical you really are?  "My, that's
a lovely shirt you're wearing."  You feel good hearing that.  For a shirt,
for heaven's sake!  You feel proud of yourself when you hear that.  People
come over to my center in India and they say, "What a lovely place, these
lovely trees"  (for which I'm not responsible at all), "this lovely
climate."  And already I'm feeling good, until I catch myself feeling good,
and I say, "Hey, can you imagine anything as stupid as that?"  I'm not
responsible for those trees; I wasn't responsible for choosing the
location.  I didn't order the weather; it just happened.  But "me" got in
there, so I'm feeling good.  I'm feeling good about "my" culture and "my"
nation.  How stupid can you get?  I mean that.  I'm told my great Indian
culture has produced all these mystics.  I didn't produce them.  I'm not
responsible for them.  Or they tell me, "That country of yours and its
poverty -- it's disgusting."  I feel ashamed.  But I didn't create
it.  What's going on?  Did you ever stop to think?  People tell you, "I
think you're very charming,"  so I feel wonderful.  I get a positive stroke
(that's why they call it I'm O.K., you're O.K.).  I'm going to write a book
someday and the title will be I'M  AN  ASS, YOU'RE  AN  ASS.  That's the
most liberating, wonderful thing in the world, when you openly admit you're
an ass.  It's wonderful.  When people tell me, "You're wrong."  I say,
"What can you expect of an ass?"

Disarmed, everybody has to be disarmed.  In the final liberation, I'm an
ass, you're an ass.  Normally the way it goes, I press a button and you're
up; I press another button and you're down.  And you like that.  How many
people do you know who are unaffected by praise or blame?  That isn't
human, we say.  Human means that you have to be a little monkey, so
everybody can twist your tail, and you do whatever you OUGHT to be
doing.  But is that human?  If you find me charming, it means that right
now you're in a good mood, nothing more.

It also means that I fit your shopping list.  We all carry a shopping list
around, and it's as though you've got to measure up to this list -- tall,
um, dark, um, handsome, according to MY tastes.  "I like the sound of his
voice."  You say, "I'm in love."  You're not in love, you silly ass.  Any
time you're in love -- I hesitate to say this -- you're being particularly
asinine.  Sit down and watch what's happening to you.  You're running away
from yourself.  You want to escape.  Somebody once said, "Thank God for
reality, AND for the means to escape from it."  So that's what's going
on.  We are so mechanical, so controlled.  We write books about being
controlled and how wonderful it is to be controlled and how necessary it is
that people tell you you're O.K.  Then you'll have a good feeling about
yourself.  How wonderful it is to be in prison!  Or as somebody said to me
yesterday, to be in your cage.  Do you like being in prison?  Do you like
being controlled?  Let me tell you something: If you ever let yourself feel
good when people tell you that you're O.K., you are preparing yourself to
feel bad when they tell you you're not good.  As long as you live to
fulfill other people's expectations, you better watch what you wear, how
you comb your hair, whether your shoes are polished -- in short, whether
you live up to every damned expectation of theirs.  Do you call that human?

This is what you'll discover when you observe yourself!  You'll be
horrified!  The fact of the matter is that you're neither O.K.  nor not
O.K.  You may fit the current mood or trend or fashion!  Does that mean
you've become O.K.?  Does your O.K.-ness depend on that?  Does it depend on
what people think of you?  Jesus Christ must have been pretty "not
O.K."  by those standards.  You're not O.K.  and you're not not O.K.,
you're you.  I hope that is going to be the big discovery, at least for
some of you.  If three or four of you make this discovery during these days
we spend together, my, what a wonderful thing!  Extraordinary!  Cut out all
the O.K.  stuff and the not-O.K.  stuff; cut out all the judgments and
simply observe, watch.  You'll make great discoveries.  These discoveries
will change you.  You won't have to make the slightest effort, believe me.

This reminds me of this fellow in London after the war.  He's sitting with
a parcel wrapped in brown paper in his lap; it's a big, heavy object.  The
bus conductor comes up to him and says, "What do you have on your lap
there?"  And the man says, "This is an unexploded bomb.  We dug it out of
the garden and I'm taking it to the police station."  The conductor says,
"You don't want to carry that on your lap.  Put it under the seat."

Psychology and spirituality (as we generally understand it) transfer the
bomb from your lap to under your seat.  They don't really solve your
problems.  They exchange your problems for other problems.  Has that ever
struck you?  You had a problem, now you exchange it for another one.  It's
always going to be that way until we solve the problem called "you."

The great masters tell us that the most important question in the world is:
"Who am I?"  Or rather: "What is 'I'?"  What is this thing I call
"I"?  What is this thing I call self?  You mean you understood everything
else in the world and you didn't understand this?  You mean you under-stood
astronomy and black holes and quasars and you picked up computer science,
and you don't know who you are?  My, you are still asleep.  You are a
sleeping scientist.  You mean you understood what Jesus Christ is and you
don't know who you are?  How do you know that you have understood Jesus
Christ?  Who is the person doing the understanding?  Find that out
first.  That's the foundation of everything, isn't it?  It's because we
haven't understood this that we've got all these stupid religious people
involved in all these stupid religious wars -- Muslims fighting against
Jews, Protestants fighting Catholics, and all the rest of that
rubbish.  They don't know who they are, because if they did, there wouldn't
be wars.  Like the little girl who says to a little boy, "Are you a
Presbyterian?"  And he says, "No, we belong to another abomination!"

But what I'd like to stress right now is self-observation.  You are
listening to me, but are you picking up any other sounds besides the sound
of my voice as you listen to me?  Are you aware of YOUR reactions as you
listen to me?  If you aren't, you're going to be brainwashed.  Or else you
are going to be influenced by forces within you of which you have no
awareness at all.  And even if you're aware of how you react to me, are you
simultaneously aware of where your reaction is coming from?  Maybe you are
not listening to me at all; maybe your daddy is listening to me.  Do you
think that's possible?  Of course it is.  Again and again in my therapy
groups I come across people who aren't there at all.  Their daddy is there,
their mummy is there, but they're not there.  They never were there.  "I
live now, not I, but my daddy lives in me."  Well, that's absolutely,
literally true.  I could take you apart piece by piece and ask, "Now, this
sentence, does it come from Daddy, Mummy, Grandma, Grandpa, whom?"

Who's living in you?  It's pretty horrifying when you come to know
that.  You think you are free, but there probably isn't a gesture, a
thought, an emotion, an attitude, a belief in you that isn't coming from
someone else.  Isn't that horrible?  And you don't know it.  Talk about a
mechanical life that was stamped into you.  You feel pretty strongly about
certain things, and you think it is you who are feeling strongly about
them, but are you really?  It's going to take a lot of awareness for you to
understand that perhaps this thing you call "I" is simply a conglomeration
of your past experiences, of your conditioning and programming.

That's painful.  In fact, when you're beginning to awaken, you experience a
great deal of pain.  It's painful to see your illusions being
shattered.  Everything that you thought you had built up crumbles and
that's painful.  That's what repentance is all about; that's what waking up
is all about.  So how about taking a minute, right where you're sitting
now, to be aware, even as I talk, of what you're feeling in your body, and
what's going on in your mind, and what your emotional state is like?  How
about being aware of the blackboard, if your eyes are open, and the color
of these walls and the material they're made of?  How about being aware of
my face and the reaction you have to this face of mine?  Because you have a
reaction whether you're aware of it or not.  And it probably isn't your
reaction, but one you were conditioned to have.  And how about being aware
of some of the things I just said, although that wouldn't be awareness,
because that's just memory now.

Be aware of your presence in this room.  Say to yourself, "I'm in this
room."  It's as if you were outside yourself looking at yourself.  Notice a
slightly different feeling than if you were looking at things in the
room.  Later we'll ask, "Who is this person who is doing the looking?"  I
am looking at me.  What's an "I"?  What's "me"?  For the time being it's
enough that I watch me, but if you find yourself condemning yourself or
approving yourself, don't stop the condemnation and don't stop the judgment
or approval, just watch it.  I'm condemning me; I'm disapproving of me; I'm
approving of me.  Just look at it, period.  Don't try to change it!  Don't
say, "Oh, we were told not to do this."  Just observe what's going on.  As
I said to you before, self-observation means watching -- observing whatever
is going on in you and around you as if it were happening to someone else.

We spend so much of our lives reacting to labels, our own and others'.  We
identify the labels with the "I."  Catholic and Protestant are frequent
labels.  There was a man who went to the priest and said, "Father, I want
you to say a Mass for my dog."  The priest was indignant.  "What do you
mean, say a Mass for your dog?"  "It's my pet dog," said the man.  "I loved
that dog and I'd like you to offer a Mass for him."  The priest said, "We
don't offer Masses for dogs here.  You might try the denomination down the
street.  Ask them if they might have a service for you."  As the man was
leaving, he said to the priest, "Too bad. I really loved that dog.  I was
planning to offer a million-dollar stipend for the Mass." And the priest
said, "Wait a minute, you never told me your dog was Catholic."

When you're caught up in labels, what value do these labels have, as far as
the "I" is concerned?  Could we say that "I" is none of the labels we
attach to it?  Labels belong to "me."  What constantly changes is
"me."  Does "I" ever change?  Does the observer ever change?  The fact is
that no matter what labels you think of (except perhaps human being) you
should apply them to "me."  "I" is none of these things.  So when you step
out of yourself and observe "me," you no longer identify with
"me."  Suffering exists in "me," so when you identify "I" with "me,"
suffering begins.

Say that you are afraid or desirous or anxious.  When "I" does not identify
with money, or name, or nationality, or persons, or friends, or any
quality, the "I" is never threatened.  It can be very active, but it isn't
threatened.  Think of anything that caused or is causing you pain or worry
or anxiety.  First, can you pick up the desire under that suffering, that
there's something you desire very keenly or else you wouldn't be
suffering.  What is that desire?  Second, it isn't simply a desire; there's
an identification there.  You have somehow said to yourself, "The
well-being of 'I,' almost the existence of 'I,' is tied up with this
desire."  All suffering is caused by my identifying myself with something,
whether that something is within me or outside of me.

But it's what all the mystics in the past have been telling us.  I'm not
saying that "me," the conditioned-self, will not sometimes fall into its
usual patterns.  That's the way we've been conditioned.  But it raises the
question whether it is conceivable to live a life in which you would be so
totally alone that you would depend on no one.

We all depend on one another for all kinds of things, don't we?  We depend
on the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker.  Interdependence.  That's
fine!  We set up society this way and we allot different functions to
different people for the welfare of everyone, so that we will function
better and live more effectively -- at least we hope so.  But to depend on
another psychologically -- to depend on another emotionally -- what does
that imply?  It means to depend on another human being for my happiness.

Think about that.  Because if you do, the next thing you will be doing,
whether you're aware of it or not, is DEMANDING that other people
contribute to your happiness.  Then there will be a next step -- fear, fear
of loss, fear of alienation, fear of rejection, mutual control.  Perfect
love casts out fear.  Where there is love there are no demands, no
expectations, no dependency.  I do not demand that you make me happy; my
happiness does not lie in you.  If you were to leave me, I will not feel
sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.

I enjoy it on a non-clinging basis.  What I really enjoy is not you; it's
something that's greater than both you and me.  It is something that I
discovered, a kind of symphony, a kind of orchestra that plays one melody
in your presence, but when you depart, the orchestra doesn't stop.  When I
meet someone else, it plays another melody, which is also very
delightful.  And when I'm alone, it continues to play.  There's a great
repertoire and it never ceases to play.

That's what awakening is all about.  That's also why we're hypnotized,
brainwashed, asleep It seems terrifying to ask, but can you be said to love
me if you cling to me and will not let me go?  If you will not let me
be?  Can you be said to love me if you need me psychologically or
emotionally for your happiness?  This flies in the face of the universal
teaching of all the scriptures, of all religions, of all the mystics.  "How
is it that we missed it for so many years?"  I say to myself repeatedly
"How come I didn't see it?"  When you read those radical things in the
scriptures, you begin to wonder: Is this man crazy?  But after a while you
begin to think everybody else is crazy.  "Unless you hate your father and
mother, brothers and sisters, unless you renounce and give up everything
you possess, you cannot be my disciple."  You must drop it all.  Not
physical renunciation, you understand; that's easy.  When your illusions
drop, you're in touch with reality at last, and believe me, you will never
again be lonely, never again.  Loneliness is not cured by human
company.  Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.  Oh, I have so much
to say about that.  Contact with reality, dropping one's illusions, making
contact with the real.  Whatever it is, it has no name.  We can only know
it by dropping what is unreal.  You can only know what aloneness is when
you drop your clinging, when you drop your dependency.  But the first step
toward that is that you see it as desirable.  If you don't see it as
desirable, how will you get anywhere near it?

Think of the loneliness that is yours.  Would human company ever take it
away?  It will only serve as a distraction.  There's an emptiness inside,
isn't there?  And when the emptiness surfaces, what do you do?  You run
away, turn on the television, turn on the radio, read a book, search for
human company, seek entertainment, seek distraction.  Everybody does
that.  It's big business nowadays, an organized industry to distract us and
entertain us.