I do want to give you a taste of the difference between analysis and awareness or information on the one hand and insight on the other.
Information is not insight.
Analysis is not awareness.
Knowledge is not awareness.
Suppose I walk in here and there was a snake crawling up my arm and I say to you,
You see the snake crawling up my arm?
I've just checked in an encyclopedia,
You know,
The Encyclopedia Britannica before coming into the session and I find that this snake is known as a Russell's Viper.
If it bit me I would die inside of half a minute.
Would you kindly suggest ways and means by which I could get rid of this creature that's crawling up my arm?
Who talks like this?
I got the information but I got no awareness.
I'm destroying myself through alcohol.
Would you kindly suggest ways and means I could get rid of this?
This guy got no awareness.
He knows he's destroying himself but he's not aware of it.
If he were aware of it,
It would drop that minute.
If I were aware of what this thing was,
I wouldn't brush it off my arm.
It would get brushed off through me.
That's what I'm talking about.
You don't change yourself.
It's not me changing me.
Change takes place through you in you.
You see change take place in you through you in your awareness.
It happens.
You don't do it.
When you're doing it,
Bad sign won't last and if it does,
God have mercy on the people you're living with because you're going to be very rigid you know.
These people who are converted on the basis of self-hatred and self-dis satisfaction,
Boy they're impossible to live with.
Uh-huh.
Somebody said,
You want to be a martyr?
Marry a saint.
So God have mercy on all of us if you change last because you're so rigid on yourself you're going to be rigid on everyone else.
But in awareness,
You keep your softness,
Your suppleness,
Your gentleness,
Your openness,
Your flexibility and you don't push.
Change occurs.
Remember an alcoholic priest telling us in Chicago when I was studying my psychology there,
He said,
You know I had all the information and I knew that the alcohol was killing me and believe me nothing changes an alcoholic,
Not the love of his wife or the love of his kids and he does love them but it doesn't change him.
But he said,
I discovered one thing that changed me.
I was lying in a gutter one day,
There was a slight drizzle,
I was in the bad books of the Archbishop again,
But he said,
In that moment I opened my eyes and I saw that this was killing me.
But I saw it.
I've never had the desire to touch a drop after that.
I've been aware.
That's what I'm talking about.
Awareness.
Not information.
Awareness.
A friend of mine who was given to excessive smoking said,
You know he had all kinds of little jokes,
He'd say,
Oh come on they tell us that tobacco kills people.
Look at the ancient Egyptians,
They're all dead and none of them smoke.
They're all dead.
So that kind of thing.
Well one day he was having trouble with his lungs,
He went to our Cancer Research Institute in Bombay which is pretty well equipped.
He went there and the doctor said,
Father you've got two patches on your lungs,
It could be cancer.
You'll have to come back next month.
You know he never touched a cigarette after that.
He knew it could kill him before,
Now he was aware that it could kill him.
That's the difference.
The founder of my religious order,
St.
Ignatius,
Has a nice expression for that.
He says,
He calls it tasting and feeling the truth.
Not knowing it,
But tasting and feeling it.
Getting a feel for it.
Ah,
When you get a feel for it,
You change.
When you know it in your head,
You don't.
