Listening Is A Great Art

You know, listening is a great art. It is one of the great arts we have not cultivated: to listen completely to another. When you listen so completely to another, as I hope you are doing it now, you are also listening to yourself, listening to your own problems, to your own uncertainties, to your own misery, confusion, the desire for security, the gradual degradation of the mind, which is becoming more and more mechanical. We are talking over together what human beings are, which is you. So you psychologically are the world and the world is you. You may have dark hair, somewhat brown faces, others may be taller, fairer with eyes slanted, but wherever they live, in whatever clime, in whatever circumstances, affluent or not, every human being, like you, goes through all this turmoil, the noise of life, without any beauty, never seeing the splendour in the grass, or the glory in the flower.

So you and I and the others are the world, because you suffer, your neighbor suffers, whether that neighbor be ten thousand miles away, they are similar to you. Your culture may be different, your language may be different, but basically, inwardly, deeply, you are like another. And that's a fact. This is not a theory, this is not something that you have to believe. It's a fact. And so you are the world and the world is you. I hope you are listening to it. As I said, we have lost the art of listening. To listen to a statement of that kind that the world is you and you are the world, probably you have never heard this before, and so it might sound very strange, illogical or unreal. So you partially listen and wish that I would go on talking more about other things; so you never actually listen to the truth of anything. If I may request you, please, kindly listen not only to the speaker, but also listen to yourself, listen to what is happening in your mind, in your heart, in your responses and so on. Listen to all that. Listen to the birds, listen to that car going by, so that we become sensitive, alive, active. So if you will kindly so listen, we can then proceed.

Humanity has evolved from the ape and so on, according to the scientists, for many, many million years. Our brain is the result of many, many millennia of time. That brain, that human mind, is now so conditioned with fear, with anxiety, with national pride, with linguistic limitations, and so on. So the question then is, to bring about a different society in the world, you as a human being who is the rest of humankind, must radically change. That is the real issue, not how to prevent wars. That's also an issue, how to have peace in the world, that is secondary, all these are peripheral, secondary issues. The fundamental issue is—is it possible for the human mind, which is your mind, your heart, your condition, is that possible to be totally, fundamentally, deeply transformed? Otherwise we are going to destroy each other, through our national pride, through our linguistic limitations, through our nationalism which the politicians maintain for their own benefit and so on and on and on.

So I hope I have made the point very clear. That is, is it possible for you as a human being who is the rest of humanity psychologically, inwardly, you are like the rest of other human beings living in the world, is it possible for your condition to change?