How do we know they are neurotic? Please, this is a very serious question. Neurotic – what does that mean? A little odd, unclear, confused, slightly off-balance? Unfortunately, most of us are slightly off-balance. No? You aren’t quite sure! Aren’t you off-balance if you are a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist or a communist? Aren’t you neurotic when you enclose yourself with your problems, build a wall around yourself because you think you are better than somebody else? Aren’t you off-balance when your life is full of resistance – me and you, we and they, and all the other divisions? Aren’t you neurotic in the office when you want to be better than another?
So, how does one become neurotic? Does society make you neurotic? That is the simplest explanation – my father or mother, my neighbour, the government, the army, everybody makes me neurotic. Are they all responsible for my being off-balance? And when I go to the analyst for help, poor chap, he’s also neurotic like me. Please, don’t laugh; this is exactly what is happening in the world. So why do I become neurotic? Everything in the world, as it exists now, the society, the family, the parents, the children, have no love. Do you think there would be wars if we had love? Do you think there would be governments that consider it is perfectly all right for you to be killed? Such a society would not exist if your mother and father really loved you, cared for you, looked after you and taught you how to be kind, how to live and how to love. These are the outer pressures and demands that bring about this neurotic society. There are also the inner compulsions and urges within ourselves, our innate violence inherited from the past, that help to make up this neurosis, this imbalance.
So this is the fact: most of us are slightly off-balance, or more, but it is no use blaming anybody. The fact is that one is not balanced psychologically, mentally or sexually – in every way, we are off-balance. The important thing is to become aware of it, to know that one is not balanced, not how to become balanced. A neurotic mind cannot become balanced, but if it has not gone to the extremes of neurosis, if it has still retained some balance, it can watch itself. One can then become aware of what one does, what one says, what one thinks, how one moves, how one sits, how one eats – watching all the time but not correcting. If you watch in such a manner, without any choice, then out of that deep watching will come a balanced, sane, human being. Then you will no longer be neurotic. A balanced mind is a mind that is wise, not made up of judgments and opinions.
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