"And what you eat is less important than what you hear and see. From your eyes, from your ears, from all your senses, you go on receiving a thousand and one things each moment, and there is no extra assimilation time, as if one were constantly sitting at the dining table, eating, eating – twenty-four hours a day. This is the situation of the modern mind: it is overloaded, so many things are burdening it; it is not any surprise that it breaks down. There is a limit to every mechanism. And mind is one of the most subtle and delicate of mechanisms.

"A really healthy person is one who takes fifty percent of his time to assimilate his experiences. Fifty percent action, fifty percent inaction – that is the right balance. Fifty percent thinking, fifty percent meditation – that is the cure. Meditation is nothing but a time when you can relax utterly into yourself, when you close all your doors, all your senses, to the outside stimulus. You disappear from the world. You forget the world, as if it exists no more – no newspapers, no radio, no television, no people. You are alone in your innermost being, relaxed, at home.

"In these moments, all that has become accumulated is assimilated: that which is of worth is assimilated, that which is worthless is thrown out. Meditation functions like a double-edged sword: on the one hand it assimilates all that is nourishing, and it rejects and throws out all that is junk. But meditation has disappeared from the world.

"In the old days, people were naturally meditative. Life was uncomplicated and people had enough time just to sit and do nothing, or look at the stars or watch the trees or listen to the birds. People had intervals of deep passivity. In those moments you become more and more healthy and whole.

"Neurosis means you are carrying such a load in the mind that you are dying under it. You cannot move – there is no question of your consciousness flying. You cannot even creep – the burden is too much…and the burden goes on increasing every moment. One cracks up. It is very natural."