To be free of demand and satisfaction necessitates investigation into oneself; it necessitates understanding the whole nature of demand. Demand is born out of duality. 'I am unhappy and I must be happy.' The demand that I must be happy, in that very thing is unhappiness. The opposite always contains its own opposite. So when one makes an effort to be good, decides to be good, in that very goodness is its opposite, which is evil. If one could only understand this and therefore that any demand of life, any demand that you must experience the truth, reality, that very demand is born out of your discontent with 'what is', and therefore that demand creates the opposite.

In the opposite there is what has been. So one must be free of this incessant demanding: the mind that is always comparing, measuring, which breeds illusion. And one must know the nature and the structure of this effort, the effort of duality (the mind is really non-dual, but there's not time to go into that). This means knowing oneself so completely that the mind is no longer seeking, asking, demanding, and therefore it is completely quiet. All that is part of meditation; not the endless prayers, repetitions and the forcing the mind to be still. That breeds conflict and conflict must inevitably exist when there is duality. There is the duality that is created by the observer and the thing he wishes to be, which is the observed. And there is the mind that is trying, not to experience, but to uncover, to discover - not follow, not imitate, not become something. The becoming is another form of duality and therefore of conflict.

All this process of knowing oneself is the beginning of meditation - not putting the mind to sleep, not having visions or transcendental experiences through some footling word - but to uncover the conditioned and the state of mind which is ourselves in its relationship to society, in its relationship to another. To discover oneself and penetrate deep - all that is meditation. One has to go into it very deeply, but not in the sense of time and measure - one must use the word 'deep', but when one uses it, it has its opposite which is 'shallow'. For when one wants to be deep, then there is conflict and therefore depth is the shallow. So the mind investigating all this becomes highly sensitive, highly aware; and obviously a mind that is tremendously alert, awake, is silent. A chattering mind says 'this is' distraction, because I want to concentrate on 'this other; but such a division is also a distraction. And being highly intelligent - for intelligence is to be completely sensitive, aware, in which there is no choice at all and hence no conflict - then out of that comes a silence which is not the opposite of noise, nor the cessation of noise. And it is only in such a silent mind that there is no demand, no illusion, because of no desire to be satisfied and therefore no desire for wider and deeper experiences; it is only such a mind that can discover what is sacred. That is meditation and in that meditation to discover it - not to be told or to copy and obey and all that immature nonsense. Then in that silence, which is really not an experience at all, but a state, in that silence one discovers, one comes upon something that has no word, that is not measurable - when the mind with its brain, which has stored up so many memories, when all that becomes extraordinarily quiet - and it is only in that state there is a possibility of discovering something that man has sought throughout the centuries.