If you don't know about yourself, actually what you are, you have no basis for any action which will be true, not fragmentary, not miserable, regretting, and so on. Don't you want to know what you are? No? To know yourself. Now how do you begin to find out about yourself? You can only know yourself either through observation in relationship, or through analysis. Right? Are you following this? Oh, come on! I can know myself. I will talk about myself. I can know myself watching my relationship with others, with my wife, if I am married, or with my girlfriend, or with friends, in that observation I see myself reacting - as a Hindu, as a Buddhist, as a Christian, as a non Christian, or imagine that I love people - you know, I find out. Or through analysis. Right? Analysing myself. Now to me analysis is paralysis. And the Hindus are very good at it, and therefore they are totally paralysed because they don't act. They analyse, analyse, analyse, therefore gradually this analysis leads them to paralysis. You watch them as they walk down the street. So either you analyse, or you observe in relationship, observe yourself, what you are, how you think, how you react, what are your responses, what is the centre from which you are moving. Always a fixed point and from there move. Therefore the movement is very limited. So we are going to find out.

... I can only find out about myself by observing my reactions in my relationship. So relationship becomes tremendously important. Right? Because it is going to reveal to me what I am. Whether I think I am divine, or there is some part of me that is divine. I am going to discover it in relationship. If there is some part of me which is divine then that part must act. So we have invented a very clever thing, which is, there is something very divine but it is all clouded over, so I have to peel off, like an onion, then I'll find myself. Self-realisation - I don't know what that means. They use that a great deal in this country, and I am sure they don't know what it means either. So I realise I can only understand myself in relationship, therefore I observe. Do I observe - please listen - do I observe with the memory of previous observation? You understand my question? I have observed myself in my relationship yesterday, with my wife, with my friend, with my boss, and I remember that. Then with that remembrance observe myself next day. Do you understand? So what is happening? I am not observing myself at all. The memory is operating, remembrance is operating, therefore there is never penetration into the very structure and nature of the self. Are we getting together somehow, in spite of the words, in spite of your intellectual blah?

So is it possible to observe myself each moment as though as it was fresh? Not having remembered my observation and let that remembrance operate. Do you see the difference? To let the remembrance operate, or observe from moment to moment, afresh each response, see what it does to you. Then that response becomes extraordinarily important because it is fresh. But the moment you name it, it has already become the old. So you have to have an alertness to watch that you do not name it, that it is not an operation of remembrance, therefore you are observing with a clarity that is penetrating, that has an insight. Right? So which is it you are doing, actually now, please, I am asking you. This is very important for you to find out, to learn, not memorise, learn from listening to find out. Gosh, I have got so much to talk about yet. Which is it that you are doing? If you are analysing then you are going to end up being paralysed completely, and become neurotic, if you are not already. Then if analysis is completely out because you see the futility of it, not because I tell you, but you yourself have an insight into the whole structure of analysis, therefore you can drop it. Then to observe yourself in relationship, to observe without the gathered knowledge of previous observation - if you do that then you are merely repetitive, therefore you are not learning, watching yourself in operation. And if you can not name that reaction.

Now, put it round the other way, a little bit. May I go on? I will go on, it doesn't matter. Have you observed anything - your wife, your girlfriend, or the tree, or the movement of water - with all your senses, with the totality of your senses, your smell, your hearing, your taste, all your senses heightened and observing? Have you ever done that? Oh my lord, what a generation. If you have done it there is no centre from which you are looking. You understand? Because then thought is part of that observation, then your senses are part of that observation. Therefore thought is not separate from the senses, therefore there is no division as the 'me', the observer and the thing you, the observed. Are we getting somewhere? I won't even ask you hereafter.

So the nature, the inmost nature of the self, when you have gone through all the layers of the self, the essence is nothing. You are nothing. Right? On that nothingness thought has imposed the superstructure of consciousness. Consciousness being the content, without the content there is no consciousness - the content being you are a Hindu, Buddhist, your religion, your particular god, your puja, your anxiety, your sorrow, your pain, your hate, your love, all that is the content of your consciousness. Obviously. And the idea that you are super atman, or super, super consciousness is part of that content. You understand what thought has done. We are absolutely nothing. All this superstructure has been built by thought. And thought is the response of registration. Of course. You understand registration, like a tape. See what thought has done.