Letters to the Schools - July 15, 1979
The major focus of these schools is giving rise to a new generation of human beings who are free from self-centered action. None other educational centers dealing with this, and it is our responsibility as educators, create a mind devoid of conflict within himself, and thus end the fighting and conflict that exist in the world around us. Can the mind, with its complex structure and movement, free of the network that has woven itself? Any intelligent human being whether it is possible to end the conflict between man and man. Some have researched this deeply, intellectually, others see the hopelessness of it is bitter, become cynical, or hope that some external agent redeems its own chaos and misery. When we ask whether the mind can escape the prison that it has created, this is not an intellectual or rhetorical question. Is made in all seriousness, it is a challenge which you must respond not according to their convenience or comfort, but according to the depth of that challenge. Such a response can not be postponed.
A challenge is not to ask whether this is possible or not, if the mind is able to free or not, the challenge, if you somehow have value, it is immediate and intense. To answer that he should have provided an intensity and immediacy - it should feel. When there is this intense way of addressing the challenge, then the question has immense implications. The challenge is demanding from you the highest excellence, not only intellectually but in each faculty of his being. This challenge is not external to you. Please do not attribute an external existence - which means converting it into one concept. You are demanding of himself all of his energy.
This same requirement sweeps all control, all contradictions and any internal opposition. Integrity involves a total, complete harmony. This is the essence of action is not egocentric.
