The individual problem is the world problem. Therefore let us return to the problem of individual perfection and the establishing of peace in the heart and in the mind of the individual.
How do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through your ambitions, desire, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice.
Follow the wandering, the distraction, find out why the mind has wandered; pursue it, go into it fully. When the distraction is completely understood, then that particular distraction is gone. When another comes, pursue it also.
To understand oneself requires patience, tolerant awareness; the self is a book of many volumes which you cannot read in a day, but when once you begin to read, you must read every word, every sentence, every paragraph for in them are the intimations of the whole. The beginning of it is the ending of it. If you know how to read, supreme wisdom is to be found.
I do not know if you have ever noticed that the more you struggle to understand, the less you understand any problem. But, the moment you cease to struggle and let the problem tell you the whole story, give all its significance - then there is understanding, which means, obviously, that to understand, the mind must be quiet.
If you realize that the ultimate happiness for all depends not on disorder of the emotions for either sex, but in harmonizing the emotions, all the problems will vanish.
If you would listen, sir, in the sense of being aware of your conflicts and contradictions without forcing them into any particular pattern of thought, perhaps they might altogether cease.
No book can teach you about yourself, no psychologist, none of the professors or philosophers. What they can teach you is what they think you are or what they think you should be.
Buddha called himself 'The Enlightened One' and Jesus called himself 'The Son of God'. To me the term 'World-Teacher' is of as little importance as 'The Son of God' or 'The Enlightened One'.
Freedom of life does not mean disorder of life, does not mean chaos, and just everyone doing anything he wants. That is not the freedom of life. The tree, when you give it a chance, protect it when it is young, will grow straight, because it has developed its own resistance; but the moment you make it delicate, then it gets crooked.
Only in Relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction and certainly not in isolation. The movement of behavior is the sure guide to yourself. It's the mirror of your consciousness; this mirror will reveal its content, the images, the attachments, the fears, the loneliness, the joy and sorrow. Poverty lies in running away from this, either in its sublimations or its identities.
Change in society is of secondary importance; that will come about naturally, inevitably, when you as a human being bring about the change in yourself.