Now, the question is this. I know that my mind is conditioned; and how am I to free my mind from conditioning when the entity that tries to free it is also conditioned? Do you understand the issue? When a conditioned mind realizes that it is conditioned and wishes to un-condition itself, that very wish is also conditioned; so what is the mind to do?

Are you following this? Please, sirs, don't merely listen to my words, but watch your own minds in operation. This is a very difficult issue to discuss with such a large group, and unless you pay real attention you will not find the answer. I am not going to give you the answer, so you have to observe your own minds very intently.

I know that my mind is conditioned as a Hindu, as a Buddhist, or whatever it is, and I see that any movement of the mind to un-condition itself is still conditioned. When the mind tries to un-condition itself, the maker of that effort is also conditioned, is he not? I hope I am explaining this.

Sirs, can you not take a pill and stop coughing? I can go on, but coughing and taking notes disturbs the others who are listening. So I will begin again. Your mind is conditioned right through; there is no part of you which is unconditioned. That is a fact, whether you like it or not. You may say there is a part of you - the watcher, the super-soul, the Atman - which is not conditioned; but because you think about it, it is within the field of thought, therefore it is conditioned. You can invent lots of theories about it, but the fact is that your mind is conditioned right through, the conscious as well as the unconscious, and any effort it makes to free itself is also conditioned. So what is the mind to do? Or rather, what is the state of the mind when it knows that it is conditioned and realizes that any effort it makes to un-condition itself is still conditioned? Am I making myself clear?