Your life is a constant struggle. From the moment you are born until you die, your life is a battlefield.

And you wonder whether that can end and if you can live completely at peace not only inwardly but also outwardly.

Actually there is no such division as the inner and the outer.

This division is regarded as existing, not only as the world inside and outside the skin, but also as the division between me and you, we and they, the friend and the enemy, and so on.

You draw a circle round yourself: a circle around me and a circle around you.

Having drawn the circle – whether it is the circle of me and you, or the family, or the nation, the formula of religious beliefs and dogmas, the circle of knowledge – these circles divides you and so there is this constant division which invariably brings about conflict.

You never go beyond the circle, never look beyond it. You are afraid to leave your own little circle and discover the circle, the barrier, around another.

Therein begins the whole process, the structure and the nature of fear.

You build a barrier around yourself, enclosing a private world very carefully made up of formulas, concepts, words and convictions. Then, living within those walls, you are afraid to go outside.

This division not only breeds various forms of neurotic behaviour, but also a great deal of conflict. And, if you abandon one circle, one wall, you build another wall around yourself.

So there is this constant, enduring resistance built of concepts, and you wonder whether it is at all possible not to have any division at all – to end all division and thus bring an end to all conflict.

Your mind is conditioned by formulas: your experiences, your knowledge, your family, your country, like and dislike, hate jealousy, envy, sorrow, the fear of this and the fear of that. That is the circle, the wall behind which you live.

And you are not only afraid of what is within, but even more so of what is beyond the wall. You can observe this fact very simply in yourself without having to read a great many books, study philosophy.

If you look in yourself ignoring what you think you should be but seeing what you actually are, then, perhaps, you would discover for yourself the existence of these formulas and concepts – which are really prejudices and bias – that divide man against man.

Perhaps, you would discover for yourself that …

We are the world. The world is you and me, the world is not separate from you and me.

We have created this world – the world of violence, the world of wars, the world of religious divisions, sex, anxieties, the lack of communication with each other, with no sense of compassion, consideration for another.

Wherever one goes in any country throughout the world, human beings, that is, you and another, suffer.

We are anxious, we are uncertain, we don’t know what is going to happen. Everything has become uncertain.

Right through the world as human beings we are in sorrow, fear, anxiety, violence, uncertain of everything, insecure. There is a common relationship between us all.

We are the world essentially, basically, fundamentally.

The world is you, and you are the world.

Realizing that fundamentally, deeply, not romantically, not intellectually but actually, then we see that our problem is a global problem. It is not my problem or your particular problem, it is a human problem

You are born in a culture, Christian or Hindu or whatever culture you were born in – you are the result of that culture – and the human being has created this culture.

And therefore the world is you, you are the world. There is no other thing. If we accept that, if we see that, not intellectually, but feel it in your heart in your mind in your blood that you are that, then the question is:

Is it possible for a human being to transform himself inwardly and therefore out?