RADHE KRISHNA 27-10-2011
Sri Satyatma Tirtha
Biography of JK
J. KRISHNAMURTI - A Biography
by Pupul Jayakar
We are like the man who tries to fill water into a pail that has holes. The more water he pours in, the more it pours out, and the pail remains empty. (p.3)
Krishnaji refused to move from “what is”, the actual. He refused to discuss abstracts like God or eternity while the mind was a whirlpool of lust, hatred, and jealousy.
If you have been experimenting with self-knowing, you will notice that your thinking process has slowed down, that your mind is not restlessly wandering. Try working out each thought to its completion, carry it right through to the end. You will find that this is very difficult, for no sooner does one thought come into being than it is pursued by another thought. The mind refuses to complete a thought. It escapes from thought to thought.
Thought can only come to an end when the thinker understands himself, when he sees that the thinker and the thought are not two separate processes. That the thinker is the thought, and the thinker separates himself from thought for his self-protection and continuance. So the thinker is continually producing thought which is transforming and changing. (p.7)
Is the thinker separate from his thoughts ? Remove thought, where is the thinker ? You will find the thinker is not. So when you complete every thought to its end, good or bad - which is extremely arduous - the mind slows down. To understand the self, the self in operation has to be watched. This can only be when the mind slows down - and you can only do this by pursuing every thought to its end as it arises. You will then see that your condemnations, your desires, your jealousies will come out before a consciousness that is empty and completely silent. (p.7-8)
If you follow each thought to its completion, you will see that at the end of it there is silence. From that there is renewal. Thought that arises from this silence no longer has desire as its motive force, it emerges from a state that is not clogged with memory.
But if again the thought that so arises is not completed, it leaves a residue. Then there is no renewal and the mind is caught again in a consciousness which is memory, bound by the past, by yesterday. Each thought, then to the next, is the yesterday - that which has no reality.
The new approach is to bring time to an end. (p.8)
Take a thought, stay with it, hold it in consciousness, you will see how arduous it is to hold one thought as it is to end thought. (p.9)
For the mind to be creative, there must be stillness. A deep stillness that can only come into being when you have faced your loneliness. (P.10)
You do not condemn a man who has a disease. This is your disease. Look at it calmly and simply, with compassion. It would be stupid to condemn or justify. To condemn is another movement of the past to strengthen itself. Look at what takes place in your conscious mind. (p.10-11)
As you look at the conscious mind, slowly the unconscious will throw up its intimations - in dreams, even in the waking state of thought.
The seed has been planted, allow it to germinate - let it lie fallow for a while.
To be free from aggression is not to become weak or humble. (p.11)
“If religion perish here, it will perish everywhere and in India’s hand is laid the sacred charge of keeping alight the torch of spirit amid the fogs and storms of increasing materialism. If that torch drops from her hands, its flame will be trampled out by the feet of hurrying multitudes, eager for worldly goods; and India, bereft of spirituality, will have no future, but will pass on into the darkness, as Greece and Rome have passed.” (Annie Besant) (P.23)
I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized.
Truth cannot be brought down, rather the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. (p.78)
I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.
As I have said, I have only one purpose: to make man free, to urge him towards freedom; to help him to break away from all limitations, for that alone will give him eternal happiness, will give him the unconditioned realization of the self.
Because I am free, unconditioned, whole - not the part, not the relative, but the whole Truth that is Eternal - I desire those, who seek to understand me, to be free, not to follow me, not to make out of me a cage which will become a religion, a sect. Rather should they be free from all fears - from the fear of religion, from the fear of salvation, from the fear of spirituality, from the fear of love, from the fear of death, from the fear of life itself. As an artist paints a picture because he takes delight in that painting, because it is his self-expression, his glory, his well-being, so I do this and not because I want anything from anyone. (P.79)
You are all depending for your spirituality on someone else, for your happiness on someone else, for your enlightenment on someone else.
My purpose is to make men unconditionally free, for I maintain that the only spirituality is the incorruptibility of the self which is Eternal, is the harmony between reason and love. This is the absolute, unconditioned Truth which is Life itself. I want therefore to set man free, rejoicing as the bird in the clear sky, unburdened, independent, ecstatic in that freedom. (p.80)
Truth is in everyone; it is not far, it is not near; it is eternally there.
You have the idea that only certain people hold the key to the Kingdom of Happiness. No one holds it. No one has the authority to hold that key. That key is your own self, and in the development and the purification and in the incorruptibility of that self alone is the Kingdom of Eternity.
But those who really desire to understand, who are looking to find that which is Eternal, without beginning and without an end, will walk together with a greater intensity, will be a danger to everything that is unessential, to unrealities, to shadows. And they will concentrate, they will become the flame, because they understand. Such a body we must create, and that is my purpose. (p-81)
My teaching is neither occult nor mystic for I hold both as limitations placed on man in his search for Truth. (p.83)
There will be always death as long as our understanding is limited by personal, egotistical outlook. (p.85)
Two flowers or things can be similar, but not the same. (p.104)
The Real is near, you do not have to seek. Truth is in ‘what is’, and that is the beauty of it. (p.110)
You cannot mix god and mammon. Reality is not for the man who has his hand in his neighbor’s pocket - who exploits and fills his heart with the riches of the earth. (p.112)
To perceive the truth, there must be a focusing of attention. (p.113)
Right action is only possible when the mind is silent and there is a seeing of ‘what is’. Action that arises from this seeing is free of motive, of the past, free of thought and cause. (p.128)
Where there is love there is protection. Hatred permits evil to enter.
I have asked myself what happens when there is no movement of the brain. It ceases completely. Only when it has to manifest it comes. It ceases to exist when it is not there. Has air any place, has light any place ? Air is enclosed and so it is there. Break the enclosure, it is everywhere.
To love is to be chaste, pure, incorruptible. (p.142)
See yourself in the pit and you will be out of it. Next time you will be watchful and see that you do not fall back into the pit. (p.142)
We feel that the ‘I’ is permanent, because all other thoughts come and go. If the thinker is permanent, then thought can be changed, controlled, transformed by the thinker. But is not the ‘I’ the result of thought ? Your mind separates the ‘I’ from thought because it cannot bear impermanency. Thought cannot move from the known to the unknown. To free the mind from the known is all the mind can do. To find out what lies beyond words, words must cease. I can only use words to get to the door. (p.146-147)
Begin where you are. Read every word, every phrase, every paragraph of the mind, as it operates through thought.
The desire to avoid pain and seek happiness (is the common factor amongst all people).
Freedom from fear can only arise when man perceives the movement of fear within himself. The seeing of it is the quenching of it. (p.147)
A reformer is concerned with effects and their rearrangements. Only a revolutionary goes to the root, to the cause in which the end is contained. (p.148)
Politics ages the mind, it is destructive to the flowering of the mind.
Anandamai Ma, the most famous of the then-living deified “Mothers”, with a very large following in North India, came to meet Krishnaji. They met in the garden, as the Mother never entered the home of a householder. She did not speak English, and spoke through a translator. She had a radiant, smiling presence. She said that she had seen a photograph of Krishnaji many years before and knew that he was very great. She asked him, “Why do you deny gurus ? You who are the Guru of Gurus”.
He (Krishnaji) replied, “People use the guru as a crutch”.
“People come to listen to you in thousands,” she said. “That means you are a guru.” He held her hand gently and did not answer. (p.149)
Man is, because he is related; without relationship, man is not. To understand life you have to understand yourself in action, in relationship to people, property and ideas.
Most of us are not aware of our relationship to nature. When we see a tree we see it with a utilitarian view - how to get to its shade, how to use its wood. Similarly, we treat the earth and its products. There is no love of the earth, only a usage of earth. If we loved the earth there would be frugality of the things of the earth. We have lost a sense of tenderness, of sensitivity. Only in the renewal of that can we understand what is relationship. That sensitivity does not come by hanging a few pictures or by putting flowers in your hair. It only comes when the utilitarian attitude is put aside. (p.154)
Stand alone. If you have acted out of the depths of self-knowing because you feel in yourself that what you have done is right, then throw yourself on life. Its water will hold you, carry you, and sustain you. But if you have been influenced, then God help you. The guru has disappeared. (p.159)
The mind is cause and effect, it is caught in time, it has a beginning and an end. Mind can never experience that which is without cause, the timeless, that which has no beginning and no end.
In silence what is there to experience ? Silence can only experience silence. (p.164)
Consciousness is the thought of the moment before, or the moment after. Thought is always of the moment or many moments before. Thought is the result of a stimulus.
We live in cause and effect, constantly rearranging them. We reject our background, our past of yesterday and of thousands of years, without being even aware that the past we reject is an aspect that lies deep within. And so the background remains undiscovered and always in conflict, in contradiction.
Do we see that consciousness is never in ‘the now’, that it is always a projection, a backward or forward movement ? That it is never in the present.
Understanding of the ‘now’ can never be through thought, through consciousness.
The mind cannot understand the ‘now’ which is the new. It is a fact, like the wall is a fact.
I see you. I hear your voice. Mind as thought is not there and yet sensory perception continues, is present. Only identification has ceased. (p.165)
First comes the layer of everyday activity - eating, going to the office, drinking, meeting people, the conditioned habits that operate automatically. It is obviously a static state that conforms to a pattern.
When one’s routine is disturbed, this surface layer ceases for an instant and what is below reveals itself. For convenience we will call this the second layer (of course, since consciousness is non-spatial, it cannot be accurate to use terms indicating layer or level). The thinking that emerges from this layer is still conditioned memory, but it is not as automatic as the surface layer. It is more active, more elastic; it is more nuances. Here thought need not conform so completely to pattern, it has more vitality. The next layer is conditioned by like, dislike, choosing, judging, identifying. Here there is the sense of the ego established and in focus.
Next come the unconscious memories of the individual and the collective, the tendencies, the forces, the urges, the racial instincts; this is the whole network of desire, the matrix of desire. There is an extraordinary movement here. The ego is still functioning - ego as desire moving in its patterns of cause and effect. The ego as desire that continues. The ego with its unconscious tendencies that reincarnate.
Seeing the fact of consciousness - not the word, not the theory, but the fact of it - is ending not possible ? Again, whatever I do to move toward the other is of effort and so destroys it. I can do nothing except be indifferent to it. And concern myself with the ego, with what I am, and my problems. (p.165-167)
I can live in silence and whatever I do is not contradictory so long as I live in silence and do not resist it. Then everything is in it except resistance. It is resistance that creates its own whirlpool, like fire the flames leap to the skies. (p.171)
When the little operates in the whole as part of the whole then the little is limitless. When it acts separately, then it is limited. The mind operating as part of the whole is endless. (p.173)
How does a man transmit the creative touch to another ?
There is something operating through K which I would like to share. I know it is possible. I feel it is as possible as the sunshine.
I feel from the beginning it was open to me. It has always been there. The distance getting clearer, clearer, closer .
What is our problem ? I have it, you don’t, and I say you can have it. But if you ask, ‘Have I got it? And what is the test ? And is there a test ? How can I know that I have it ?’ - then you are lost. For there is no test. You ask, ‘Is this enough ?’ It is this asking for more that is the blockage. (p.178)
Religion comes when the mind has understood the working of itself. When the mind is quiet, very still - the stillness is not the peace of death; this stillness is very active, very alert, watchful. To find out what God - Truth is, one has to understand sorrow, and the struggle of human existence. To go beyond the mind there must be a cessation of the self, the ‘me’. It is only then, that which we all worship, seek, comes into being.
I would go into the way of teaching, the quality of attention. I would enquire how to teach the child to learn without memory being predominant. I would talk about attention and not concentration. I would go into the way the child sleeps, his food, the games he plays, the furniture in his room; I would see that the child is attentive to the trees, the birds, the spaces which are around him. I would see that he grows in an atmosphere of attention. (p.197)
Can one live without self-concept ? Can one live without the reflected self-image ? Only in that is there action without consequence.
To live without self-concept is to be aware of the constant projection of the self and seeing it to negate it. (p.202)
Desire to become is the soil in which sorrow takes root.
There is an astounding movement in the stillness of discovery moment to moment, which destroys germination in the mind. Self-knowing is the understanding of becoming in oneself. The religious revolution is the ending of becoming. (p.207)
The straight line being the ‘I’ and the horizontal bar, the negation of the ‘I’. (regarding the sign of the cross) (p.214)
It is important to have a free mind that is not full of experience, but free to see beyond experience. One has to die to experience every day.
In science, one drops past experience, to discover a new insight. From the very beginning one should be taught to be free of conditioning - as a Hindu, Muslim, Christian. None of us let go. We only pretend to do so.
One has to cease to be Hindu or Muslim; one has to be a human being. But that is very difficult. Thinking about being free leads you nowhere.
First, one must be free. Freedom first, not through thinking about freedom.
God is a phrase. To realize God, you must have a free mind, a good mind that does not follow anybody. A mind that has no guru, no system.
There has to be self-knowledge. Not knowledge of the Atman, but how one thinks, why one thinks - how one acts. What is the ‘oneself’ ? I am not speaking only of the conscious self, but of the deep levels of the unconscious. What is needed is a revolutionary mind. You cannot have that by sadhana. If you see only through one window, your view is limited.
There is no my way, your way, his way. There is only one way.
I think in one way, you think in another. We mislead a whole generation. One has to be free, man has to be free to speak of God. The Communists say there is no God, you say God is. You are both conditioned. You are both saying the same thing. That is the calamity. There is no your or my way of meditation. There is only meditation.
Religion is the source of life, not reform. I am not against reforms. They are necessary. But religion is different.
Do you have anything in this country except politics ? Why is there nothing deeply creative ?
There is a deep contradiction in the Indian mind. We talk about ideals and do the opposite. We are inhibited from becoming something because we feel we should not be ambitious. So frustration leads to superficial reformation and we pursue that with passion. I say, act and observe the result. But tradition and the gurus say the opposite. In this country one sees frustration, contradiction, and the sense of being a very old race. We search for God, but we have not lived life. That may be the reason we turn to the superficial which we call ‘reform’.
People take politics very seriously in India. Politics is most destructive. When people say they are working for peace, for reform, it is always the ‘I’ that is important. People who touch politics cannot have a fresh mind. The world needs fresh minds, clear minds, not minds that are conditioned by being Hindus or Muslims.
You have to be alone to find the real - totally alone.
The mind has become so mechanical. It needs and seeks a goal in life. We follow paths to a goal. We never question. We are too respectable. But one must have a free mind, not a mind burdened with tradition, with the past. Extreme freedom is needed. But the moment you think you are free, you are not free. One has to unearth oneself, unravel oneself, delve into the corners of one’s mind - ignite the mind. (p.222-225 -- talks with Vinobaji)
What is necessary is to further the mind, and the mind cannot be furthered if there is an end in view.
To be a revolutionary, you have to see further than the immediate. If you want to further the mind and have object in view, you are limiting the mind. (p.233)
Acceptance, adjustment, rationalization are escapes. They have no place. You are being self-defensive. Look at the fact without emotion or sentiment - otherwise you close the door of perception.
(p.234)
The timeless is whispering around every corner, it lies under every leaf. It is open not to the dehydrated human being who has suppressed himself and no longer has any passion. But to the mind, which is in a state of meditation, moment to moment.
Practice for ten thousand years, you will still be within the field of time, of knowledge.
If there is a living coming to an end from moment to moment, there is an extraordinary state of being nothing. Of coming to the abyss of an eternal movement and dropping over the edge, which is death. (p.235)
A perceiving mind is living, moving, full of energy.
There are no answers to life’s questions. The state of mind that questions is more important than the question itself. If it is a right question, it will have no answer, because the question itself will open the door. But, if it is a wrong question, you will find ways and means to solve the problem and so remain in bondage. For he who asks the question is himself the bondage.
To uncover is to discover, but to accumulate what you discover is to cease to discover.
Attention implies a clarity of all togetherness, in which there is no exclusion.
I have nothing to offer. If you are listening, you are already in that state.
Can the mind, without motive, let go ? That is real renunciation. Keep the mind clean, alert, watchful, observe every thought, see its significance without motive, urge, or compulsion, then there comes an energy that is not your own, which descends upon you. There is a limitless being, and in that energy is reality. (p.236)
We are not concerned with being, but with having been and becoming. There is an active present, a state of being, a living, active state.
Benediction comes when there is a state of non-reaction. It is benediction to know death because death is the unknown.
For most of us, what is explored is not important; therefore, it does not open up the capacity to enter into ‘what is’. Life is an extraordinary thing - we call the past the time before, and the future as the time after; can one go into it through the present ? Truth has no future, no past, no continuity. Meditation is the state of living in which the frontiers of the mind break down. There is no self, no centre, and therefore, no circumference. (p.237)
Through negation there is creation. Whatever is born of a mind, that is completely empty, is creation. Out of that arises negative thinking. Such an approach, based as it is on attention, can have no measure. The mind that goes into itself deeply enters on a pilgrimage of enquiry from which there is no return. To open the door to the eternal, the journey into the self is the only way. (p.238)
Creation can only be when the mind is completely empty; whatever is born of that emptiness is negative thinking. It has no root, no source.
The probing is with nothing into endless being. (p.239)
When the mind is not concerned with the particular; then comprehending the whole, it can play with the particular.
One has to see inwardly and outwardly. That seeing brings an extraordinary energy. In that seeing, there is an awareness that there is no outer and inner, they are really one continuous movement. It is the tide going out and the tide coming in.
Time prevents perception. A mind that thinks of distance as space from here to there, as becoming, as achievement, such a mind cannot see a thing totally. (p.240)
The quality of going beyond itself belongs to the new mind, which is free of time; time as an inner psychological process. The time of the psyche brings about fear and so limits the flow. To understand the enormous pervasive nature of fear, to see the complexities in which mind is entangled, you must understand time. Fear and time go together. Fear is the destructive energy in man, it withers the mind. (p.240-241)
When the scientific mind breaks through the limitations of the known - then perhaps it approaches the religious mind.
The scientific mind with its logic, its precision, its enquiry, investigates the outer world of nature, but this does not lead to an inward comprehension of things; but an inward comprehension brings about an understanding of the outer. We are the result of the influences of the outer. The scientific mind is precise and clear in its investigation. It is not a compassionate mind, for it has not understood itself.
What is the true religious spirit ? Obviously, not the man who believes - who goes to temples and churches. Nor is the reaction to that the religious spirit. It is only when one denies all belief or non-belief, when there is a seeing of the fact and the falseness of belonging and reaction, that the mind is in a state of negation, which means the mind is alone, it has no authority, no goal; therefore, it is not in a state of fear, which is reaction.
How does the religious mind enter the unknown ? It cannot come to the unknown except by ‘jumping’. It cannot calculate and enter the unknown.
The religious mind is the real revolutionary mind. It is not a reaction to what has been. The religious mind is explosive - creative.
The religious mind is the only mind that can respond totally to the present challenge and to all challenges, at all times. (p.241)
The human mind, as it is now, is the result of environment. The mind has to extricate itself from all influences to find the ‘timeless’.
To understand time, not put it aside, not create a theory about it, you have to investigate your own mind, grow aware of the extraordinary impact of influence. Time is the influence of a thousand yesterdays. There is not only chronological time, time by the watch, but there is time as memory, stretching backwards and forwards. This memory is unconscious, buried, hidden deep in the vast recesses of one’s mind. This is time, from place to place, from here to there, and there is time as becoming. I am this and I shall be that. This reaching into the future to become introduces the permanent and the transient. (p.242)
It is only when the mind observes itself as being conditioned that there is no observer.
The mind cannot come to it (the unknown); the mind that measures itself in time must wipe itself away and enter into that, without knowing that. You cannot know it. It has no colour, no space, no shape. You cannot make a statement about it. All you can do is to jump out of the old, then you won’t even know, for you are part of that extraordinary state.
What is needed is a new mind that functions wholly. The scientific mind is directive; the religious mind explodes without direction. Self-knowing is essential; because it is only a mind in self-knowing, because it is understanding itself, that it withers away, for the new mind to be.
What is demanded is a fertile mind. Fertile in the sense of rich, in which a seed can grow, be nurtured, carefully watched over, a mind that is deeply enquiring, searching, looking, watching. Only that mind, exquisitely pliant, not tethered to anything, is sensitive. The fertile mind is empty, like the womb before it conceives. Can you take one thing ? Take envy - understand it and go through it ruthlessly. Put your teeth into it and strip the mind of envy. Take stock of yourself, day after day, minute after minute, to ruthlessly penetrate this appalling thing - envy. (p.243)
The mind is a vast thing. It is not a spot in the universe. It is the universe. To investigate the universe demands an astonishing energy. It is energy greater than all rockets, because it is self-perpetuating, because it has no centre. This is only possible when there is an enquiry into the inner and outer movement of the mind. The inner, the racial unconscious, in which are the urges, compulsions, the hidden dark fears, is the story of man. How do you observe ? How do you listen ? If the observation, the listening, is direct, then you are observing negatively. Then the mind has no conclusions, no opposites, no directives. In that looking it can see what is near and what is far away. In that there is an ending. Such a mind is the new mind. It has exploded without direction. Such a mind is the religious mind. (p.243-244)
You cannot watch (the mind) from morning till night. You cannot be vigilant, never blinking for the whole day. So play with it. Play with it lightly. To question ‘how am I to be aware’ is to create conflict. But as you are playing, you learn.
The mind that explodes without direction is compassionate, and what the world needs is compassion, not schemes.
The new mind is not within the field of knowledge. It is that state of creation which is exploding. For that, all knowledge has to come to an end.
The new mind cannot come into being with authority, with masters, with gurus. With a burnt-out mind, you cannot come to the new mind. You need a fresh, eager, live mind. What releases energy is direct perception. The greater part of the brain is the residuary animal and the remaining part undefined. We live our life in the very small part. We never investigate. Sensitivity arises when you watch a tree, bird, animal, ant. Watch how you walk, bathe, dress; watch yourself being important. If you so watch, if you so observe thought and every emotion, flowering, then the brain is very sensitive; out of that, the flowering of the mind begins. That is mutation.
To watch, to observe everything, is to be aware of totality, never to limit any thought, to let everything flower. A mind that is completely quiet, without any reaction, is only an instrument of observation. It is alive, sensitive.
Mutation is only possible when you have brought this about through awareness, without effort. The challenge of the present time and of every instant, if you are awake, is to respond totally to something that is new.
Creation is not invention. The universe is not made of invention. (p.244)
Don’t please do these exercises with any strain; if there’s a strain, the exercises are not being done properly. Give complete attention and things will come right. Don’t settle down; keep the flame alive.
Don’t get lost in trivialities; don’t let yourself be drowned; keep awake; be in a state of complete attention.
Days are too short and one lives in a day, a thousand years. Keep alive, aware and don’t let anything whatsoever smother the flame. Don’t let a single thought escape without observing from where it came, its motives, and significance. Keep awake.
As one grows older, as the mind gets more set and more mechanical, it is very important to break down every pattern of thought and feeling - to be aware of every movement of thought, to watch ceaselessly, never to allow moods to gather strength or allow the physical to cloud the clarity of the mind. Don’t let the flame die down or let the smoke of everyday events smother it. (p.246)
Don’t be smothered by mediocrity and by everyday events of nothing. Be intense and don’t let the flame die.
Life is short and there is so much to discover not outwardly but within. There are vast unexplored regions within and don’t let a day go by without discovering something. Be explosive inwardly and then the outer things will take care of themselves.
Don’t get entangled, be aware of deep thoughts and feelings. Be direct simple and clear.
Fear really destroys and perverts all seeing. It breeds illusion; it dulls the mind, it destroys dignity. Search it out - be open to it. Don’t find excuses for it. Go into it ruthlessly. Be aware of every form of fear and wash it away. Don’t let it remain with you for a single minute. There is no innocency where there is fear, jealousy, attachment. Be burningly aware of it. (p.247)
There is an inward observation which is not the outward observation turned inward. The brain and the eye which observe only partially do not comprehend the total seeing. They must be alive completely but still; they must cease to choose and judge but be passively aware. Then the inward seeing is without the border of time-space. In this flash a new perception is born. (p.248)
A new mind is only possible when the religious spirit and the scientific attitude form part of the same movement of consciousness.
When you see fear, enquire into it, face it, then it goes away.
There are two kinds of death. Bodily death and death of thought. We are not afraid of that (bodily death). We are afraid that thought as the ‘me’, which has lived, acquired money, family, the ‘me’ that wants to become important, will end. (p.250)
You have finished looking at things outside, and now with your eyes closed, look at what is happening inside. Watch what is happening inside you. Do not think, but just watch. Do not move your eyeballs, just keep them very very quiet. There is nothing to see now, you have seen all the things around you, now you are seeing what is happening inside your mind. And to see what is happening inside your mind, you have to be very quiet inside. And when you are quiet, do you know what happens to you ? You become very sensitive, you become very alert to things outside and inside. Then you find that the outside is the inside. Then you find out that the observer is the observed.
It is only when thought flowers that it can naturally die. Like the flower in a garden, thought must blossom, it must come to fruition and then it dies. In the same way, thought must be given freedom to die.
Look at the garden, the flowers in front over there ! They come to bloom and after a few days they wither away, because it is their nature. Now, frustration must be given freedom so that it blossoms.
(p.251)
Is there a momentum which keeps moving, keeping itself clean, healthy ? That momentum, that flame which burns, can only be when there is freedom for everything to flower - the ugly, the beautiful, the evil, the good, the stupid - so that there is not a thing suppressed, so that there is not a thing which has not been brought out and examined and burnt out. And I cannot do that if through the little things I do not discover frustration, misery, sorrow, conflict, stupidity, dullness. If I only discover frustration through reasoning I do not know what frustration means.
The little mind always deals with symptoms and never with the fact. It does not have the freedom to find out. It is doing the very thing which indicates the little mind, for it says, ‘It is a good idea, I will think about it’, and so it is lost for it is then dealing with idea, not with the fact. It does not say, ‘Let it flower, and see what happens.’ Then it would discover.
Can I see the symptom, go into the cause, and let the cause flower ? But, I want it to flower in a certain direction, which means I have an opinion on how it should flower. Now, can I go after that ? Can I see that I prevent the cause flowering because I am afraid I do not know what will happen if I allow frustration to flower ? So, can I go into why I am afraid ? I see, that so long as fear exists there can be no flowering. So I have to tackle fear, not through the idea of fear, but tackle it as a fact, which means, can I allow fear to blossom?
All this requires a great deal of inward perception. To allow fear to blossom - do you know what that means ? Can I allow everything to blossom ? This does not mean I am going to murder, rob somebody, but can I just allow ‘what is’ to blossom ? (p.252)
Do you know what jealousy is ? At the moment of jealousy, do you say it is imagination ? You are burning with it, are you not ? You are angry, furious, why do you not pursue it ? Pursue it not as an idea, but actually. Can you take it out, look at it, and see that it flowers ? So that each flowering is a destruction of itself and, therefore, there is no ‘you’ at the end to ask who is observing the destruction? In that is real creation.
Take a bud, an actual bud from a bush. If you nip it, it will never flower, it will die quickly. If you let it blossom, then it shows you the colour, the delicacy, the pollen. It shows what it actually is, without your being told it is red, it is blue, it is pollen. It is there for you to look at. In the same way, if you allow jealousy to flower, then it shows you everything it actually is - which is envy, attachment. So, in allowing jealousy to blossom, it has shown you all its colours, it has revealed to you what is behind jealousy.
To say that jealousy is the cause of attachment is mere verbalisation. But, in actually allowing jealousy to flower, the fact that you are attached to something becomes a fact, an emotional fact, not an intellectual verbal idea. And so each flowering reveals what you have not been able to discover; and as each fact unveils itself, it flowers and you deal with it. You let the fact flower and it opens other doors, till there is no flowering at all of any kind and, therefore, no cause or motive of any kind. (p.253)
Be supple mentally. Strength does not lie in being firm and strong but in being pliable. The pliable tree stands in a gale. Gather the strength of a swift mind.
Life is strange, so many things happen unexpectedly, mere resistance will not solve any problem. One needs infinite pliability and a single heart.
Life is a razor’s edge and one has to walk on that path with exquisite care and with pliable wisdom.
Love is a dangerous thing, it brings the only revolution that gives complete happiness. So few of us are capable of love, so few want love. We love on our own terms, making of love a marketable thing. We have the market mentality and love is not marketable, a give-and-take affair. It is a state of being in which all man’s problems are resolved. We go to the well with a thimble and so life becomes a tawdry affair, puny and small.
What a lovely place the earth could be, for there is so much beauty, so much glory, such imperishable loveliness. We are caught in pain and don’t care to get out of it, even when someone points a way out. (p.255)
Be alert to all your thoughts and feelings, don’t let one feeling or thought slip by without being aware of it and absorbing all its content. Absorbing is not the word, but seeing the whole content of the thought-feeling. It is like entering a room and seeing the whole content of the room at once, its atmosphere and its spaces. To see and be aware of one’s thoughts makes one intensively sensitive, pliable, and alert. Don’t condemn or judge, but be very alert. Out of separation, out of the dross comes pure gold.
To see ‘what is’, is really quite arduous.
To perceive ‘what is’ there must be the spirit of intelligent revolt.
To see the rope as the rope needs no courage, but to mistake the rope for a snake and then to observe needs courage. One must doubt, ever search, see the false as the false. One gets power to see clearly through the intensity of attention; you will see it will come. One has to act; the river is never non-acting, it is ever active. One must be in a state of negation, to act; this very negation brings its own positive action. (p.256)
One must be very clear within oneself. Then I assure you everything will come right; be clear and you will see that things will shape themselves right without your doing anything about it. The right is not what one desires.
There must be complete revolution, not only in great things, but in little everyday things.
Don’t settle back, keep at it. Keep the pot boiling, inwardly.
How little we know of love, of its extraordinary tenderness and ‘power’, how easily we use the word love; the general uses it; the butcher uses it; the rich man uses it and the young boy and girl use it. But how little they know of it, its vastness, its deathlessness, its unfathomability. To love is to be aware of eternity.
What a thing is relationship, and how easily we fall into that habit of a particular relationship, things are taken for granted, the situation accepted and no variation tolerated; no movement towards uncertainty, even for a second, entertained. Everything is so well regulated, so made secure, so tied down, that there is no chance for any freshness, for a clear reviving breath of the spring. This and more is called relationship. If we closely observe, relationship is much more subtle, more swift than lightning, more vast than the earth, for relationship is life. Life is conflict. We want to make relationship crude, hard, and manageable. So it loses its fragrance, its beauty. All this arises because one does not love, and that of course is the greatest thing of all, for in it there has to be the complete abandonment of oneself.
It is the quality of freshness, of newness, that is essential, or otherwise life becomes a routine, a habit; and love is not a habit, a boring thing. Most people have lost all sense of wonderment. They take everything for granted, this sense of security destroys freedom and the wonderment of uncertainty. (p.257)
We project a far distant future, away from the present. The attention to understand is always in the present. In attention there is always a sense of imminence. To be clear in one’s intentions is quite an arduous task; intention is as a flame, ceaselessly urging one to understand. Be clear in your intentions and you will see, things will work out. To be clear in the present is all that one needs, but it is not quite so easy as it sounds. One has to clear the field for the new seed and once the seed is planted, its own vitality and strength creates the fruit and the seed. Outward beauty can never last, it is marred always if there is no inward delight and joy. We cultivate the outer, paying so little attention to the thing inside the skin; but it is the inner that always overcomes the outer. It is the worm inside the apple that destroys the freshness of the apple.
It needs great intelligence for a man and woman to be forgotten, to live together, not surrender to each other or be dominated by one or the other. Relationship is the most difficult thing in life.
You will always remain unscared if you are inwardly very alert and awake and warmly adjust to things externally.
Substitutes soon whither away. One may be worldly even though one has a few things. The desire for power in any form; the power of the ascetic, the power of a big financier or the politician or the pope is worldly. The craving for power breeds ruthlessness and re-emphasises the importance of oneself, the self-expansive aggressiveness is in essence worldliness. Humility is simplicity, but the cultivated humility is another form of worldliness.
Very few are aware of their inward changes, setbacks, conflicts and distortions. Even if they are aware they try to push them aside or run away from them. Don’t you do it. I don’t think you will, but there is a danger of living with your thoughts and feelings too closely. One has to be aware of one’s thoughts and feelings, without anxiety, without pressure. The real revolution has taken place in your life, you should be very much aware of your thoughts and feelings - let them come out, don’t check them, don’t hold them back. Let them pour out, the gentle as well as the violent ones, but be aware of them. (p.258)
We have never gone deep down into ourselves and discovered ‘what is’. We exist on the surface, satisfied with so little and made happy and unhappy by such small things. Our petty minds have petty problems and petty answers, and so we spend our days. We don’t love, and when we do it is always with fear and frustration, with sorrow and longing.
I was thinking how important it is to be innocent, to have an innocent mind. Experiences are inevitable, perhaps necessary; life is a series of experiences, but the mind need not be burdened with its own accumulative demands. It can wipe off each experience and keep itself innocent - unburdened. This is important, otherwise the mind can never be fresh, alert and pliable. The ‘how’ to keep the mind pliable is not the problem; the ‘how’ is the search method, and method can never make the mind innocent; it can make it methodical, but never innocent, creative.
It is always difficult to keep simple and clear. The world worships success, the bigger the better; the greater the audience the greater the speaker; the colossal super buildings, cars, aeroplanes and people. Simplicity is lost. The successful people are not the ones who are building a new world. To be a real revolutionary requires a complete change of heart and mind, and how few want to free themselves. One cuts the surface roots; but to cut the deep feeding roots of mediocrity, success, needs something more than words, methods, compulsions. There seem to be few, but they are the real builders - the rest labour in vain.
One is everlastingly comparing oneself with another, with what one is, with what one should be, with someone who is more fortunate. This comparison really kills. Comparison is degrading, it perverts one’s outlook. And on comparison one is brought up. All our education is based on it and so our culture. So there is everlasting struggle to be something other than what one is. The understanding of what one is uncovers creativeness, but comparison breeds competitiveness, ruthlessness, ambition, which we think brings about progress. Progress has only led so far to more ruthless wars and misery than the world has ever known. To bring up children without comparison is true education. (p.259)
Fulfilment of desire is such a small affair, however pleasant; but with its fulfilment, as it keeps on satisfying itself, routine, boredom sets in and the real thing fades away. It is the real thing that has to remain and the wonder of it is, it does - if there is no thought of fulfilment but just seeing things as they are.
We are so very seldom alone; always with people, with thoughts that crowd in, hopes that have not been fulfilled, or are going to be - recollections. To be alone is essential for man to be uninfluenced, for something uncontaminated to take place. For this aloneness there seems to be no time, there are too many things to do, too many responsibilities and so on. To learn to be quiet, shutting oneself in one’s room, to give the mind a rest, becomes a necessity. Love is part of this aloneness. To be simple, clear, and inwardly quiet, is to have that flame.
Thoughts may not be easy but the more one asks of life, the more fearful and painful it becomes. To live simply, uninfluenced, though everything and everyone is trying to influence, to be without varying moods and demands is not easy, but without a deep quiet life, all things are futile.
How clear the blue sky is, vast, timeless and without space. Distance and space is a thing of the mind; there and here are facts, but they become psychological factors with the urge of desire. The mind is a strange phenomenon. So complex and yet so essentially simple. It is made complex by the many psychological compulsions. It is this that causes conflict and pain, the resistance and the acquisitions. To be aware of them, and let them pass by and not be entangled in them, is arduous. Life is as a vast flowing river. The mind holds in its net the things of this river, discarding and holding. There should be no net. The net is of time and space, it is the net that creates here and there; happiness and unhappiness. (p.260)
Pride is a strange thing, pride in small things and big things; in our possessions, in our achievements, in our virtues, pride of race, name and family; in capacity, in looks, in knowledge. We make all this feed this pride, or we run to humility. The opposite of pride is not humility - it is still pride, only it is called humility; the consciousness of being humble is a form of pride. The mind has to be something. It struggles to be this or that, it can never be in a state of nothingness. If nothingness is a new experience, it must have that experience, the very attempt to be still is another acquisition. The mind must go beyond all effort only then … (p.260-261)
One can’t have both, the inner and outer riches. The inner fullness far outweighs the outer. One can be robbed of the outer, outer events can shatter what has been carefully built up; but the inner riches are incorruptible, nothing can touch them, for they have not been put together by the mind.
The desire to fulfil is very strong in people and they pursue it at any cost. This fulfilment, in every way and in any direction, sustains people; if fulfilment fails in one direction, then they try in another. But is there such a thing as fulfilment ? Fulfilment may bring a certain satisfaction, but it soon fades away and again we are on the hunt. In the understanding of desire the whole problem of fulfilment ceases. Desire is effort to be, to become, and with an ending to becoming the struggle to fulfil vanishes. (p.261)
It is strange how most people want recognition and praise - to be recognized as a great poet, as a philosopher, something that boosts one’s ego. It gives great satisfaction but it has very little meaning. Recognition feeds one’s vanity and perhaps one’s pocket, and then what ? It sets one apart and separation breeds its own problems, ever increasing. Though it may give satisfaction, recognition is not an end in itself. But most people are caught in the craving to be recognized, to fulfil, to achieve. And failure is then inevitable, with its accompanying misery. To be free of both success and failure is the real thing. From the beginning not to look for a result, to do the thing that one loves, and love has no reward or punishment. This is really a simple thing if there is love. (p.261-262)
How little attention we pay to things about us, to observe and to consider. We are so self-centered, so occupied with our worries, with our own benefits, we have no time to observe and understand. This occupation makes our mind dull and weary, frustrated and sorrowful, and from sorrow we want to escape. As long as the self is active there must be weary dullness and frustration. People are caught in a mad race, in the grief of self-centered sorrow. This sorrow is deep thoughtlessness. The thoughtful, the watchful are free from sorrow. (p.262)
Thought has a root or roots, thought itself is the root. There must be reaction or otherwise there’s death; but to see that this reaction does not extend its root into the present or into the future is the problem. Thought is bound to arise, but to be aware of it and to end it immediately is essential. To think about thought, to examine it, to play around it, is to extend it, to give it root. This is really important to understand. To see how the mind thinks about thought is to react to the fact. The reaction is sadness and so on. To begin feeling sad, to think of the future return, to count the day etc., is to give root to the thought concerning the fact. So the mind establishes roots, and then how to root them out becomes another problem, another idea. To think of the future is to have roots in the soil of uncertainty. (p.262-263)
To be really alone, not with yesterday’s memories and problems but to be alone and happy, to be alone without any outward or inward compulsion, is to let the mind be un-interfered.
You must a have a clear mind, a free un-tethered mind; this is essential, you cannot have a clear, penetrating mind if there is fear of any sort. Fear clogs the mind. If the mind does not face its own self-created problems, it is not a clear, deep mind. To face its own peculiarities, to be aware of its urges, deeply and inwardly, to acknowledge all this without any resistance, is to have a profound and clear mind.
What is important is not to prove or disprove a point, but to find out the truth.
The ‘what is’ is not different from the thinker. The thinker is that ‘what is’, the thinker is not separate from that ‘which is’. (p.263)
It’s not possible to be at peace if there’s any kind of want, any hope for some future state. Suffering follows if there’s any want, life is generally full of want; even to have one want leads to endless misery. For the mind to free itself from that one want, even to know that one desire needs attention, and that is quite an affair. When found, don’t let it become a problem. To prolong the problem is to allow it to take root. Don’t let it take root. The one want is the one and only pain. It darkens life; there’s frustration and pain. Just be aware of it and be simple with it. (p.263-264)
Everything in life, except for a few things, is second-, third-, or fourth-hand – the Gods, poems, politics, music. So our life is empty. Being empty we try to fill it – with music, with Gods, with love, with forms of escape, and the very filling is the emptying. But beauty is not to be bought. So few want beauty and goodness, and man is satisfied with second-hand things. To throw it all off is the real and only revolution, and then only is there the creativeness of reality. (p.264)
It’s strange how man insists on continuity in all things; in relationships, in tradition, in religion, in art. There’s no breaking off and a beginning new again. If man had no book, no leader, no one to copy, no one to follow, to example, if he was completely alone, stripped of all his knowledge, he would have to start from the very beginning. Of course this complete stripping of himself must be wholly and fully spontaneous and voluntary, otherwise he would go mad, force himself into some kind of neurosis. As only a few seem to be capable of this complete aloneness, the world carries on with tradition – in its art, its music, its politics, its Gods – which everlastingly breed misery. This is what is happening in the world at the present time. There is nothing new, there is only opposition and counter-opposition – in religion the old formula of fear and dogma continues; in the arts there is the endeavour to find something new. But the mind is not new, it is the same old mind, ridden with tradition, fear, knowledge, and experience, endeavouring to search the new. It is the mind itself that must denude itself, wholly, for the new to be. This is the real revolution. (p.264-265)
The desire to be secure, in one form or another, is so dominant that the mind will adjust itself to any pattern that can give it security and safety. But there is no security; and when one really understands this, there’s something totally different, which creates its own way of life. That life cannot be understood or copied; all that one can do is to understand and be aware of the ways of security, which brings its own freedom. (p.265)
I was thinking, can we educate man on the outside but leave the center free ? Can we help man to be free inwardly and be always free ? For it is only in freedom that he can be creative and so be happy. Otherwise, life is such a tortuous affair, a battle within and so without. But to be free inside needs astonishing care and wisdom; but few see the importance of this. We are concerned with the outer and not with creativity. But to change all this, there must be at least a few who understand the necessity of this, who themselves are inwardly bringing about this freedom. It is a strange world.
What is important is a radical change in the unconscious. Any conscious action of the will cannot touch the unconscious. As the conscious will cannot touch the unconscious pursuits, wants, urges, the conscious mind must subside, be still, and not try to force the unconscious, according to any particular pattern of action. The unconscious has its own pattern of action, its own frame within which it functions. This frame cannot be broken by any outward action, and will is an outward act. If this is really seen and understood, the outward mind is still; and because there is no resistance, set up by will, one will find that the so-called unconscious begins to free itself from its own limitations. Then only is there a radical transformation in the total being of man.
Dignity is a very rare thing. An office or a position of respect gives dignity. It is like putting on a coat. The coat, the post gives dignity. A title or a position gives dignity. But strip man of these things, and very few have that quality of dignity that comes with inward freedom of being as nothing. Being something is what man craves for, and that something gives him a position in society which it respects. Put a man into a category of some kind – clever, rich, a saint, a physicist; but if he cannot be put into a category that society recognises, he is an odd person. Dignity cannot be assumed, be cultivated, and to be conscious of being dignified is to be conscious of oneself, which is to be petty, small. To be nothing is to be free of that very idea. Being, not of or in a particular state, is true dignity. It cannot be taken away, it always is. (p.266)
To allow the free flow of life, without any residue being left, is real awareness. The human mind is like a sieve which holds some things and lets others go. What it holds is the size of its own desires; and desires, however profound, vast, noble, are small, are petty, for desire is a thing of the mind. Not to retain, but to have the freedom of life to flow without restraint, without choice, is complete awareness. We are always choosing or holding, choosing the things that have significance and everlastingly holding on to them. This we call experience, and the multiplication of experiences we call the richness of life. The richness of life is the freedom from the accumulation of experience. The experience that remains, that is held, prevents that state in which the known is not. The known is not the treasure, but the mind clings to it and thereby destroys or defiles the unknown. (p.266-267)
We are, most of us at least, creatures of moods and a variety of moods. Few of us escape from it. With some, it is caused by the bodily condition, with others it is a mental state. We like this up and down state, we think this movement of moods is part of existence. Or one just drifts from one mood to another. But there are few who are not caught in this movement, who are free from the battle of becoming, so that inwardly there is a steadiness, not of the will, a steadiness that is not cultivated, nor the steadiness of concentrated interest, nor the product of any one of these activities. It comes upon one only when the action of will ceases.
Money does spoil people. There is a peculiar arrogance of the rich. With very few exceptions, in every country, the rich have that peculiar atmosphere of being able to twist anything, even the Gods, and they can buy their Gods. Riches is not only of wealth, but the capacity of being able to do things. Capacity gives man an odd sense of freedom. He also feels he is above others, he is different. All this gives him a sense of superiority, he sits back and watches other people squirming; he is oblivious to his own ignorance, the darkness of his own mind. Money and capacity offer a very good escape from this darkness. After all, escape is a form of resistance, which breeds its own problems. Life is a strange business. Happy is the man who is nothing. (p.267)
Take things easily, but inwardly with fullness and alertness. Don’t let a moment slip by without being fully aware of what is happening inwardly and about you. Often this is what it is to be sensitive, not to one or two things, but to be sensitive to everything. To be sensitive to beauty and to resist ugliness is to bring about conflict. You know, as you watch you will perceive that the mind is always judging – that is good and that is bad, this is black and that is white – judging people, comparing, weighing, calculating. The mind is everlastingly restless. Can the mind watch, observe, without judging, calculating ? Perceive without naming and just see if the mind can do that. (p.267-268)
To be simple is for the mind to free itself from all results, is for the mind to empty itself of all conflict.
Thought cannot, do what it will, free itself from the opposites; thought itself has created the ugly and the beautiful, and good and the bad. So it cannot free itself from its own activities. All that it can do is to be still, not choose. Choice is conflict and the mind is back again to its own entanglements. The stillness of the mind is the freedom from duality.
There is so much discontent and one thinks an ideology, communism or other, is going to solve everything, even banish away discontent, which of course it can never do. Communism or any other organized religious conditioning can never do away with discontent; but one tries every way to smother it, to shape it, to give it content, but it is always there. To be discontented, one thinks, is wrong – normally not right, and yet one cannot do away with it; it has to be understood. To understand is not to condemn. So really go into it, watch it without any desire to change it, to channelize it. Be aware of it as it operates during the day, perceive its ways and be alone with it.
Freedom comes when the mind is alone. Just for the fun of the thing, keep the mind still, free of all thought. Play with it, don’t make it a very serious affair, without any struggle, be aware and let the mind be still. (p.268)
There is frustration as long as one is seeking fulfilment. The pleasure of fulfilment is a constant desire and we want the continuity of that pleasure. The ending of that pleasure is frustration in which there is pain. Again the mind seeks in different directions fulfilment and again it meets frustration. This frustration is the movement of self-consciousness which is isolation, separation, loneliness. From this the mind wants to escape again into some form of fulfilment. The struggle to fulfil brings the conflict of duality. When the mind sees the futility or truth of fulfilment, in which there is always frustration, then only can the mind be in that state of loneliness from which there is no escape. When the mind is in this state of loneliness, without any escape, then only is there freedom from it. Separation exists because of the desire to fulfil; frustration is separation. (p.268-269)
Be very strong inwardly. Be firm and clear. Be complete; don’t try to be complete, be complete. Don’t depend on anyone or on anything or on any experience, or memory; the dependence on the past, however pleasant, only prevents the completeness of the present. Be aware and let that awareness be intact and unbroken even if it be for a minute.
Sleep is essential; during sleep one seems to touch unknown depths, depths that the conscious mind can never touch or experience. Though one may not remember the extraordinary experience of a world that is beyond the conscious or the unconscious, it has its effect on the total consciousness of the mind. Probably this is not very clear, but just read it and play around it. I feel there are certain things that can never be made clear. There are no adequate words for them, but nevertheless they are there. (p.269)
You must easily, voluntarily put aside all the pleasurable memories and images, so that your mind is free, uncontaminated for the real thing. Do, please, pay attention to what is written. Every experience, every thought must end each day, each minute, as it arises; so that the mind does not put out roots into the future. This is really important, for this is true freedom. Thus there is no dependence, for dependence brings pain, affecting the physical and breeding psychological resistance. And as you said, resistance creates problems – to achieve, to become perfect, and so on. In seeking is involved struggle, effort, endeavour; this endeavour, this struggle, invariably ends in frustration – I want something or I want to be something – in the very process of getting there is the craving for the more, and the more is never in sight and so there is always a sense of being thwarted. So there is pain. So once again one turns to another form of fulfilment, with its inevitable consequence. The implication of struggle, of effort, is vast, and why does one seek ? Why does the mind everlastingly seek and what makes it seek ? Do you know or are you aware that you are seeking ? If you are, the object of your search varies from period to period. Do you see the significance of search, with its frustrations and pain ? That in the finding of something that is very gratifying there is stagnation, with its joys and fears, with its progress and becoming ? If you are aware that you are seeking, is it possible for the mind not to seek ? And if the mind does not seek, what’s the immediate, actual reaction of a mind that does not seek ?
Play with this, find out; don’t force anything, don’t let the mind coerce itself into any particular experience, for then it will breed for itself illusion. (p.269-270)
How frightened we are of death; what we are frightened of is living; we do not know how to live; we know sorrow and death is only the final sorrow. We divide life, as living and dying. Then there must be the ache of death, with its separation, loneliness, isolation. Life and death are one movement, not isolated states. Living is dying, dying to everything, to be reborn every day. This is not a theoretical statement but to be lived and to be experienced. It is will, this constant desire to be, that completely destroys the simple ‘being’. This ‘being’ is totally different from the sleep of satisfaction, fulfilment or the conclusions of reason. This being is unaware of the self. A drug, an interest, an absorption, a complete ‘identification’ can bring about a desired state, which is still self-consciousness. True being is the cessation of the will. (p.270)
We have such infinite capacities, in every direction, to find the nameless or to bring about hell on earth.
There is a life without will, without choice. This life comes into being when the life of will comes to an end. (p.271)
The weather represents man’s moods, up and down, darkness and temporary light.
It is strange how we want freedom and we do everything to enslave ourselves. We lose all our initiative. We look to others to guide us, to help us, to be generous, to be peaceful; we look to the gurus, masters, saviours, meditators. Someone writes great music, someone plays it, interpreting it in his own way and we listen to it, enjoying it or criticising it. We are the audience watching the actors, football players, or watching the cine-screen. Others write poems and we read; others paint and we gape at them. We have nothing, so we turn to others to entertain us, to inspire us, to guide or save us. More and more, modern civilisation is destroying us, emptying us of all creativeness. We ourselves are empty inwardly and we look to others to be enriched and so our neighbour takes advantage of this to exploit, or we take advantage of him. (p.271-272)
When one is aware of the many implications involved in looking to others, that very freedom is the beginning of creativeness. That freedom is true revolution and not the false revolution of social or economic adjustments. Such revolution is another form of enslavement.
Our minds make little castles of security. We want to be sure of everything, sure of our relationship, or our fulfilment’s, hopes, and of our futures. We build these inward prisons and woe to anyone that disturbs us. It is strange how the mind is ever seeking a zone where there will be no conflict, no disturbance. Our living is the constant breaking up and the rebuilding, in different forms, of these zones of safety. Our mind then becomes a dull and weary thing. Freedom consists in having no security of any kind.
It is really astonishing to have a still and a very calm mind, without a single wave of thought. Of course, the stillness of a dead mind is not the calm mind. The mind is made to be still by the action of will.
It is really most amazing what happens when the mind is, thus, silent. In that state all consciousness, as knowing, recognising ceases. The instinctual pursuit of the mind, memory, has come to an end. And it’s very interesting how the mind begins to do its best to capture that worldless state, through thinking, verbalising, perfecting symbols. But for this process to come to an end, naturally and spontaneously, is like dying to everything. One does not want to die, and so there is always an unconscious struggle going on, and this struggle is called life. It is odd how most people want to impress others, by their achievements, by their cleverness, by their books – by any means to assert themselves. (p.272)
Are your days swifter than a weaver’s shuttle ? Do you live in one day, a thousand years ? It is strange, for most people boredom is a very real thing; they must be doing something, be occupied with something, an activity, a book, the kitchen, children, or God. Otherwise they are with themselves, which is very boring. When they are with themselves they get self-centered, crotchety, or become ill and ill-humoured. An unoccupied mind – not a negative blank mind, but an alert passive mind, a totally empty mind – is a sweet thing, capable of infinite possibilities. Thoughts are wearisome, uncreative, and rather dull. A thought may be clever, but cleverness is as a sharp instrument – it soon wears itself out, and that is why clever people are dull. (p.272-273)
Let there be an unoccupied mind without deliberately working for it. Let it happen rather than cultivate it. Read this with awareness and let it take place. Hearing it or reading about the unoccupied mind is important, and how you read and how you listen.
What is important is to have the right kind of exercise, good sleep, and a day that has significance. But one slips so easily into a routine, and then one functions in the easy pattern of self-satisfaction, or in the pattern of self-imposed righteousness. All their patterns invariably lead to death – a slow withering away. But to have a rich day, in which there is no compulsion, no fear, no comparison, no conflict, but to be simply aware, is to be creative.
You see, there are rare moments when we feel this, but most of our life is made up of eroding memories, frustration, and vain efforts, and the real thing goes by. The cloud of dullness covers everything and the real thing fades away. It is really quite arduous to penetrate through this cloud and to be in the simple clarity of light. Just see all this and that is all. Don’t try to be simple. This trying only breeds complexity and misery. The trying is becoming and the becoming is always desire, with its frustrations.
How important it is to free oneself from all emotional, psychological shock, which does not mean that one must harden oneself against the movement of life. It is these shocks that gradually build up various psychological resistances that also affect the body, bringing various forms of illness. Life is a series of events (wanted and unwanted); and as long as we pick, choose which we shall keep and which we shall discard, there must inevitably be a conflict (of duality) which is the shock. These series of checks harden the mind, heart; it is a self-enclosing process and so there is suffering. To allow the movement of life, without choice, without any particular movement, desirable or undesirable, to take root needs enormous awareness. It is not a matter of trying to be aware all the time, which is wearisome, but seeing the necessity of the truth of awareness, then you will see that the very necessity operates without your forcing yourself to be aware. (p.273)
One may travel, be educated in the best of schools, in different parts of the world; have the best of foods, instruction, climate; but does all this make for intelligence ? One knows of such people, and are they intelligent ? The Communists are trying, as others, like the Catholics, to control and shape the mind. The very shaping of the mind does have certain obvious effects – more efficiency, a certain quickness and alertness of mind – but all these different capacities do not make intelligence. The very learned people, those who have plenty of information, knowledge, and those who are educated scientifically, are they intelligent ? Don’t you think intelligence is something entirely different ? It is really the total freedom from fear. Those whose mortality is based on security, security in every form, are not moral, for the desire for security is the outcome of fear. Fear and the constraint of fear, which we call morality, is really not moral at all. Intelligence is the total freedom from fear, and intelligence is not respectability, nor is it the various virtues cultivated through fear. In understanding fear there is something which is wholly different from the formulations of the mind.
It is good to experiment with identification. How do we experiment with anything ? From the most simple to the most complex. We say this is mine – my sandals, my house, my family, my work, and my god; with identification comes the struggle to hold. Containing it becomes a habit. Any disturbance which might break that habit is pain, and then we struggle to overcome that pain. But identification, the feeling of the mind, belongs to something that continues. If one really experiments with this, just being aware, without any desire to alter or choose, one discovers so many astonishing things in oneself. The mind is the past, the tradition, the memories which are the foundation of identification. Can the mind, as we know it now, function without this process of identification ? Find out, play with it; be aware of the movements of identification with the common daily things, with the most abstract. One finds out odd things, how thought fades, how it plays tricks upon itself.
Let awareness pursue thought through the corridors of the mind, uncovering, never choosing, ever pursuing. (p.274)
It is especially difficult, as one is placed, not to desire, crave for certain things, happenings; not to compare. But whatever the condition, desires, cravings, comparisons continue. We always crave for more or for less, for continuity of some pleasure and the avoidance of pain. What is really quite interesting is this: Why does the mind create a center, within itself, round which it moves and has its being ? Life is a thousand and one influences, innumerable pressures, conscious and unconscious. Among these pressures and influences, we choose some and discard others, and so we gradually build up a center. We don’t let all these pressures and influences pass by, unaffected by them. Every influence, every pressure affects us, the effect is called good or bad, we don’t seem to be able to watch, to be aware of pressure, and not take part in it one way or the other, resisting it or welcoming it. This resistance or welcome makes for the center from which we act. Can the mind not create this center ? The answer can only be found through experimentation, not through any form of assertion or denial. So experiment and find out. With the ending of this center there is true freedom. (p.274-275)
One does get agitated, anxious and sometimes frightened. These things do happen. They are the accidents of life. Life is a cloudy day. It was clear and sunny the other day, but now it is raining, cloudy and cold; this change is the inevitable process of living. Anxiety, fear suddenly comes upon one; there are causes for it, hidden or fairly obvious, and one can with a little awareness find those causes. But what is important, is to be aware of these incidents or accidents and not give them time to take root, permanent or temporary. One does give root to these reactions when the mind compares; it justifies, condemns or accepts. You know, one has to be on one’s toes all the time, inwardly, without any tension. Tension arises when you want a result, and what arises again creates tension which has to be broken. Let life flow. (p.275)
It is so fatally easy to get used to anything, to any discomfort, to any frustration, to any continued satisfaction. One can adjust oneself to any circumstances, to lunacy or to asceticism. The mind likes to function in grooves, in habits, and this activity is called living. When one sees this one breaks away from all this and tries to lead a life which has no meaning, no moorings, no interests. Interests, if one’s not very alert, bring us back to a pattern of life. In all this you will see the will, the directive, is functioning, the will to be, to achieve, to become and so on. Will is the very center of the chooser and so long as will exists, the mind can only function in habits, either self-created or imposed. Freedom from will is the real problem. One can play various tricks upon oneself, to be free from will, the center of the me, the chooser, but it will go on under a different name, under a different cloak. When one sees the real significance of habit, of getting used to things; choosing, naming, pursuing an interest and soon; when there is an awareness of all this, then the real miracle takes place, the cessation of will. Experiment with this, be aware of all this, from moment to moment, without any wish to arrive anywhere. (p.275-276)
A quiet mind, but very alert, watchful, is a blessing; it is like the earth, rich with immense possibilities. When there is such a mind, not comparing, not condemning, then only is it possible for the immeasurable richness to be.
Don’t let the smoke of pettiness smother you and let the fire go out. You have to keep going, tearing away, destroying, never taking root. Don’t let any problem take root, finish with it immediately and wake up every morning fresh, young, and innocent.
Be wise and definite about your health; don’t let emotion and sentiment interfere with your health nor belittle your action. There are too many influences and pressures that constantly shape the mind and heart, be aware of them, cut through them and don’t be a slave to them. To be a slave is to be mediocre. Be awake, aflame.
Face the fear, invite it, don’t let it come upon you suddenly, unexpectedly, but face it constantly; pursue it diligently and purposefully.
Don’t let it frighten you.
Deeply, inwardly, there may be a slow withering away; of this you may be unconscious or, being conscious, negligent. The wave of deterioration is always on the top of us, it does not matter who it is. To be ahead of it and meet it without reaction and be out of it requires great energy. The energy only comes when there is no conflict whatsoever, conscious or unconscious. Be very awake.
Don’t let problems take root. Go through them rapidly, cut through them as through butter. Don’t let them leave a mark, finish with them as they arise. You can’t help having problems, but finish with them immediately. (p.276)
Don’t, whatever happens, be smothered by circumstances, by the family – by your own physical condition. Eat properly, exercise, and don’t become slack. Having come to a certain state, keep going, don’t stay there - either go forward or you retrogress. You can’t be static. You have ridden on the inward wave for so many years, withdrawn, inward, but now from that inward movement you must go out – meet more people - expand.
Have done a great deal of meditation and has been good. I hope you are doing it too – begin by being aware of every thought – feeling – all day, the nerves and the brain – then become quiet, still – this is what cannot be done through control – then really begins meditation. Do it with thoroughness.
Whatever happens don’t let the body shape the nature of the mind – be aware of the body, eat right, be by yourself during the day for some hours – don’t slip back and don’t be a slave to circumstances. Be tremendous – be awake. (p.277)
He said that he had been speaking in India for thirty years and nothing had happened. “There is not one person who is living the teaching”. (p.284)
People who are without creativity build dead institutions. (p.287)
The Krishnamurti Foundation was formed in London on the 28th of August (1968), this year, to direct and co-ordinate the diffusion of the teachings throughout the world. We worked for many months on the statutes of the Krishnamurti Foundation to make quite sure that it would respond exactly to our needs, that no one person or group could seize control of it now or later, and that it was entirely responsible to me and subject to my wishes.
I would like to make it clear that the Krishnamurti Foundation is simply an office, simply an efficient instrument to do material things. It is not in any way an “organisation” in the sense in which I use that word so often when I speak against organisations. It is not a psychological organisation. Belief and following are not involved, nor hierarchy. It is simply a committee responsible to me which will see that the teachings, publishing, etc., are diffused according to my wishes. (p.291)
It is necessary to ask questions. Questions to which there are no answers. So that the question throws man back of himself and the way the structure of thought operates. The hand that seeks to throw away or reject is the same hand that itself holds.
The act of seeing and listening activates the sense. Seeing, without the word as thought intervening, creates energy.
To know the self as it is, not as one wishes it to be, which is illusion, an ideal and fictious. It is only that ‘which is’ that can be transformed, not that which you wish to be. The understanding of what you are – ugly, beautiful, wicked, evil – understanding without distortion is the beginning of virtue. Virtue alone gives freedom.
He spoke of the tenacity of the Hindu mind, which despite conquest and repression had kept alive the ancient teachings.
Indian myth delighted Krishnaji. He often made me repeat the legend of Narada. (p.298)
It is one of the greatest sorrows in the world that one wants to convey something tremendous with one’s heart and mind and you don’t receive it. That is sorrow not only to the speaker, but to you who listen. (p.305)
Without understanding the structure and nature of thought you will not come upon this silence naturally. (p.305-306)
To find that which is not of time, which has no measure, which is not nameable, the mind must be completely still.
When you see that, then there is clarity in observation and learning, which is the act of intelligence. In observing that which is false the brain cells become quiet, and with that the mind naturally, easily, sweetly – without any effort – is extraordinarily quiet. And in that stillness of mind there is no time.
In that silence there is no observer, no experience, but only that quality of complete and total silence. In that silence the door is open. What lies beyond the door is indescribable, it cannot be put into words. (p.306)
I think the idea of the teaching and the taught is basically wrong, at least for me. I think it is a matter of sharing rather than being taught, partaking rather than giving or receiving. And so, can we share something which is not in the field of time, thought, and direction ?
Where you are the other is not. (p.313)
Look Rajesh, the world is in darkness. It is mad. The violence you see all around you is crazy. And these places – Rajghat (Varanasi), Rishi Valley, Brockwood Park, and Ojai – have to become centers of light. The older people have messed everything up. They have not done it. And the new people, young people have to do it. You understand ? I hope you have not come here to experiment for a year or two but are committed to this. (p.315)
The whole question of the student having deep trust and confidence in the educator was, Krishnaji said, “central to the process of education”. (p.316)
Sex is like a tender flower, an intense flame, delicate and rare. It has to be nurtured and cherished. You have to be specially watchful when it is not operating as nature intended. To let sex function freely is to dissipate energy; to suppress it brutally is to destroy something delicate and intensely beautiful. So watch it with warmth, nurture it, let it discover itself and unfold – neither denying it nor succumbing to it. (p.317)
Questions to which there are no answers. So that the questions throws man on himself and the way the structure of thought operates.
To learn is to observe and to act.
To observe, to watch things as they are, not twist them to suit inclinations or prejudices. (p.318)
The word freedom is a dangerous word. Freedom for most people means to do what they would like to do, a freedom from social restrictions, social morality.
Freedom from something is one thing, and freedom for itself another. Only in negation is there freedom. By learning about disorder, there is order.
With the dying is the living. You must die to yesterday, to live today, and then there is love.
To live in the present is to see in the microscope, not according to your wish or my wish, to see in the microscope how the past flows through the present and explodes into the future. But as long as the mind is caught in the image of the past, how can the heart live in the present ? And love is the present, not the tomorrow.
What have you done with your life ? Don’t say, ‘I am going to fulfil next life.’ There is only the present, the beauty of the present, the richness of the present. You have had this life, this extraordinary thing called life in which there is sorrow, pleasure, fear, guilt and all the tortures and the loneliness and despair of life and the beauty of life. And what have you done with it ? A life was given to you, the most precious thing in the world, and what have you done ? You have distorted it, tortured it, torn it to pieces, divided it, brought about violence, destruction, hatred, lived a life without love, without compassion. (p.320)
When you accept nationalism, and you accept it because you have found security in it, that security is completely destroyed because nationalism invariably divides; and where there is a division there must be conflict. So your nationalism, in which the brain has found security, is bringing about its own destruction.
Our brain, the brain cells, have themselves been conditioned for thousands and millions of years. And if there is no breakthrough in this conditioning, there will always be disaster, there will always be sorrow, there will always be confusion, there will be no harmony.
There is security only in the truth that life has no security, but is a constant movement. That is the truth, and in that truth there is security. (p.321)
Order, which is harmony, comes only when there is freedom from disorder. Order comes only when there is understanding, learning, about the disorder. And out of the learning about disorder – not the learning how to bring order into disorder, which you can never do – out of that learning comes order, naturally. (p.321-322)
First there is a hearing by the ear and there is a hearing without the ear, which is a state like a mill pond that is absolutely still without a single movement. There is no air that ruffles it. And when the question is put in it, it is like a piece of stone thrown in a still pond. The waves are the answers.
When you approach the question afresh, the very throwing of the question into the mill pond produces the answer. There is no entity that answers. (p.332)
hought being aware of itself,
Of its own activities. (p.333)
Observing in the sense that in such observation there is no remembrance of the thing which is being observed.
In the process of observation, there is no center from which it is being observed, the center being memory, various conclusions, hurts. There is no point from which ‘it’ is being observed.
And in this observation there is no conclusion, there is no association with past events, which means the ‘seeing’ is as quiet as the mill pond. (p.334)
As the physical organism is now over 80 I have been considering how best the next 10 or 15 years should be spent. As I have repeated and can repeat it again without boredom, I have spent more time and given more talks in India than anywhere else. I am not concerned with the results, what effect the Teachings have in India, how deep the roots have penetrated, but I think one has the right to ask and should ask, as I am asking, why there is not in India after all these years one person totally and completely involved in these Teachings, living them and dedicated entirely to them. I am not in any way blaming any of you, but if I may, I would urge you to give your serious attention to this. (p.342)
Total ending of thought is immobility, is silence; thought as time has to stop. (p.371)
Can one observe without the past ? Can one have insight without the weight of yesterday ? Insight is instantaneous. Perception of totality is an instant perception. If that is so, what is the need for preparation ? (p.373)
Time, preparation, the whole process of evolution is unnecessary. If you so listen, you have the whole perception. (p.374)
The mind is heavily conditioned. It does not listen. K says something totally true. Something immovable, irrevocable, and it has tremendous weight, like a river with volumes of water behind it. But X does not listen to that extraordinary statement.
After all, listening, seeing totally, is like thunder or lightning that destroys everything. To go through the whole process is not to deny this instant thing. (p.375)
Thought is a fragment. Can thought, which is a fragment, see the whole of consciousness ? ‘I am hurt’ – that feeling is a part of consciousness. Thought is a broken piece in movement. That fragment, that thought, cannot see the whole. Thought does not see it is hurt; it says, ‘I am hurt’.
Thought can never be aware of the total content of consciousness. It can only be aware of the fragment.
Consciousness is the totality of life. Not only my life, your life, but the life of the animal, the tree; the totality of all life. (p.376)
India has lived all these centuries on ideas. She has to move from a life based on ideas, which are non-facts, to seeing of fact only. (p.380-381)
With the Buddha there were only two after fifty years – Sariputta and Mogallanna – that may be the lot of man.
Man has starved; sat alone in the mountains; he has everything to have that something; but apparently it does not happen that way. So I say perhaps he should go quickly through with this watching, observing silence, and end it. (p.387)
See what the monks and other human beings have done to get this extraordinary intelligence, and they have not got it ? So, I deny all the things that man has tried to do, to get it. So my mind, my brain, is free from experiment.
People have investigated and they have all failed. They have tried getting drunk, tried sex, tried drugs. I see all that. Why should I go through all that ? So I see and I deny. It is not blind denial. The denial has tremendous reason, logic behind it. (p.389)
My brain is the brain of humanity. I am absolutely certain of that. So, being the brain of humanity, my brain has done all this. I don’t have to go through it all.
Move out of that circle which man has woven around himself. (p.391)
The words in the Bible and other religious books of the east are that the beginning was chaos and out of that chaos came order. I think it is the other way.
The beginning was order. Man made chaos.
The darkness of chaos has been created by man. (p.394)
As long as there is a center there must be experience and knowledge. When there is no center, there is a state of non-experience, a state of observation, when all the senses are highly awakened and functioning, superbly sensitive, then in that state, there is no center as the ‘me’ involved. It is this center as the ‘me’ that creates desire. This state, this center, cannot reach that state – the beginning.
Man cannot aspire or sacrifice or discipline to reach anywhere near it. So what is he to do ? It is very important to understand desire. If that is not completely understood, the subtlety of desire is immense and therefore it has extraordinary, immense possibilities of illusion.
Desire, will, time, must come to a complete end. That is, the mind, the brain, must be absolutely pure – not pure as no sex, no ugly thoughts – but the brain must be completely empty of knowledge. A state where thought can never arise – unless necessary. So that thought has its own responsibility, so that it can only act in certain directions.
A brain that is free from all experience, and therefore knowledge, is not in the field of time, therefore has come to the beginning of all things.
The mind which is free from all experience, a mind that has never experienced – is like a vessel, it can receive that. (p.394)
Desire of the senses – desire that comes from the center has to be completely emptied. There is no movement towards ‘that’ which means an end to time. Any movement in any direction is time. Man has made great struggle to reach that. It is not possible. Desire which is so subtle and therefore the creator of illusion, must end. The brain has to be free of desire. There can be no pattern, no direction, no volition, no desire. (p.394-395)
It means the ending of attachment. That is the beginning.
The mind is full of thought because the senses are not fully flowering. The senses create thought. Senses create experience, which is knowledge, memory – thought. When the senses are fully flowering, what happens ? There is no center as desire.
We have never allowed the senses to flower. We have operated with thought as the medium of action. But we have not enquired into the origin of thought deeply. (p.395)
Order is the beginning, the source of an energy that can never diminish. To investigate it there must be an investigation of the senses and desire. That blessedness of order is when the mind does not have a single desire and the senses are operating fully, totally. (p.397)
From the beginning of time, the people of India had something which was genuine, true. They were deeply religious in the true sense of the word. There were the Buddhas and the pre-Buddhas who had left their imprint on the soil of India. The present world of astrologers, gurus – does that indicate that the depth of the real things is going ? (p.399)
Do you see that doubt in religious enquiry is one of the most extraordinary things that existed in India ? Christianity was based on faith; doubt, scepticism, questioning were denied. They were regarded as heresy. In India and in the Asiatic world doubt was one of the principles of religious investigation. (p.399-400)
Doubt with its clarity, doubt with its immense vitality purges the mind of illusions.
Because it is only through doubt that you come to the Brahman, not through acceptance of authority. (p.400)
I want to find out if in India the mind is being caught and carried away by the materialistic wave. That wave is threatening the Western world, expressing itself through technology, materialism, nationalism. The Western mind is moving in the direction of the outer, and it dominates the world.
India moved from a center and that center spread all over the Asiatic world through inner search, dance, music, and cultural expression. The Western world was centered in belief, which is so superficial. That superficiality , that materialism, is that conquering this ?
Can one see the outer manifestation of this in India, through its bureaucracy, technology, science, nuclear energy; following the ways of the West; and so is the pristine, original core of this country gradually withering away ? India was centered on one thing. And therefore she had a fire which spread throughout the world. Now what is happening to the Indian core ?
I want India to be that. So I say I hope she is not going to lose it. If it is lost, it is lost. I don’t want her to lose it, because then it is the end of everything. (p.401)
I am talking about the Indian mind that has produced the Upanishads, the Buddha. India has been the storehouse of something very very great. The West, with its emphasis on faith and its materialism, is destroying that greatness.
Religion in the West is based on faith and belief with all its implications. To be caught in faith or belief is the ending of doubt. Religious enquiry in India was not based on faith, so it could move in any direction. Free of direction, there was a different movement taking place; this is the essence of the Buddhas, the pre-Buddhas. (p.403)
If you see the whole movement of pleasure – sexual, sensual – you have understood the whole content of consciousness.
If you are so attending, all your senses are completely awake. It is not one sense attending, but the totality of all the senses. Otherwise you cannot attend. (p.404)
The brain has an infinite capacity. That immense capacity is being used for material purposes. (p.407)
Many, many years later, after the death of my brother, and many, many years after that – I can’t tell you when, but one morning I suddenly saw the face, a most extraordinarily beautiful face, that used to be with me for many years.
I used to see it every day – in sleep, while walking. It was not a vision. It was like that picture, an actual fact.
It is not something imagined. I have tested it out. It is not something that I wanted. I do not say, ‘What a beautiful face’ – there is no wish to have it. (p.409)
I have seen the face in the dark, in the light, while walking. You may say that this is all cuckoo. But it is so I have never done anything for any spiritual reason. (p.410)
Thought is a material process; thought is the outcome of memory, experience, knowledge, stored up in the brain cells, in the thinking process itself. And it has functioned in a particular direction, continuously evolving. Thought, memory is a part of the brain. The brain is material; this brain contains memory, experiences knowledge, from which comes thought. So thought has its continuity, based on knowledge, which is the past; and that past is operating all the time, modifying itself in the present and continuing. In this continuity, it has found immense security through beliefs, illusion, knowledge. In this faith there is a sense of being protected, of being ‘in the womb of God’. This is an illusion. And disturbance in that continuity is the challenge; and when it cannot respond properly, it finds its security is disturbed. (p.412)
You be a light to yourself, not accept the light of another.
Death says to you ‘end it’, end your attachments completely, because that is what is going to happen when you stop breathing. You are going to leave everything behind.
So death implies the ending of attachment. It is only in the ending that there is a beginning. (p.413)
Knowledge is always limited. So the brain, having found security in the movement of knowledge, clings to it and translates every incident, according to the past. In the movement of ending of continuity is complete order.
It is necessary for a mind, for a brain to become very young, fresh, innocent, alive, youthful. This is only possible when there is no psychological registration.
To come upon love, the whole stream of consciousness must come to an end. Consciousness being your jealousy, your antagonism, your ambition, your desire for becoming bigger, your desire for seeking power. Where there is any sense of egotism, the other is not. And the essence of egotism is the process of registration. The ending of sorrow is the beginning of compassion.
There are several things implied in meditation. There must be space; not physical space only, but space within the mind. (p.414)
The whole world believes in the word ‘God’. Could we put away all beliefs ? Only then is it possible to investigate.
Human being say they believe in God. God is omnipotent and omnipresent, he exists in all things. There is a traditional acceptance of that word with all its content. Can one be free of the million years of this tradition – consciously as well as unconsciously to be free of that word ? (p.416)
Man has tried in several ways to find this (God). He has fasted, he has tortured himself, but he is always anchored to something. (p.418)
We all want to know – which means, to put God into the bay of knowledge. (p.419)
The whole world believes in God. In Ceylon they were very upset when I said the word God is put together by thought.
The whole world believes in God. Unfortunately, I don’t know what God is. Probably I can never find out.
And I am not interested in finding out. But what I am concerned with is whether the mind, the brain, can be totally free from all accumulated knowledge, experience ? Because if it is not, it will function always within its field, expanding – contracting – vertically, horizontally – but always within that area. It does not matter how much one accumulates, it will still be within that area. And if the mind moves from that area and says, ‘I must find out’, then it is still carrying the movement, the mind, with it. (p.420)
If we could say ‘I know nothing’ in the deepest sense of the word – it is there – you don’t have to do anything. (p.421)
I come to you and put this question – are you ready to answer or do you hold the question quietly ? Hold it, do you understand ? And out of that very holding without any reaction, any response, comes the answer.
A cup holds water. A pond is a receptacle that holds water, a holding without any wave, without any motive or movement, without any sense of trying to find an answer. (p.422)
A meditation in which there is no state of achievement, there is nothing. That may be the ground, the origin of all things, a state in which the meditator is not. (p.423)
In that there is absolutely freedom from sorrow. That state of meditation has come with the complete ending of the self. (p.424)
I meet the Buddha. I have listened to him very deeply. In me the whole truth of what he says is abiding, and he goes away. He has told me very carefully, ‘Be a light to yourself’. The seed is flowering. I may miss him. He was a friend, somebody whom I really loved. But what is really important is that seed of truth which he has planted – by my alertness, awareness, intense listening, that seed will flower. Otherwise, what is the point of somebody having it ? If X has this extraordinary illumination, a sense of immensity, compassion, and all that, if only he has it and he dies, what is the point of it all ? (p.431)
Learn to die to yourself completely.
The truly religious mind is concerned with discovery and the understanding of what Truth is. (p.434)
The teachings were not the book. The only teaching were, ‘Look at yourself. Enquire into yourself – go beyond. There is no understanding of the teaching, only understanding of yourself. The words of K were a pointing of the way. The understanding of yourself is the only teaching. (p.436)
The probing is with nothing, into wordless endless being.
The enquiry within is infinite. You must be alone, stripped, then you can take a journey into the unknown.
In life there is both creation and destruction – the very act of listening is the miracle, it is light in darkness. In it is mutation and deep uprooting.
Total attention of one thought unfolds the whole nature of thought. (p.437)
The brain is conditioned to a pattern. The very biological necessity makes it to break the pattern. The insight needed to see this does not need training, nor time.
Time makes the brain duller and duller. I question the whole concept of time to get anywhere. I don’t accept inner time.
Could you consider denying time ? Not time as the linear stream, but psychological time as becoming. Can you so deny time that it ceases in your brain ? We are speaking of the psychological process of time as a movement from here to there. Can you accept time as sunrise and sunset and say, there is no other time ? (p.438)
Fear attracts evil. To talk about evil is to invite it. (p.442)
Evil is a fact. Leave it alone. Your mind should not play with evil. Thinking about it is to invite it. Hatred, jealousy, attract evil. That is why it is important for the mind and body to be still and silent and not let any strong emotions arise, without watching relentlessly. Deterioration walks one step behind you. No matter who you are.
Have you ever observed a cat watching a hole into which a mouse has hidden ? Watch any strong feeling like that, without the eyes moving away.
In India the concern with religion has been deep. Indian tradition has maintained that the understanding of the Self, of the Universe, of the Highest Principle, is the most significant pursuit. (p.444)
The training of the brain and the refinement of the brain, the training of the brain in action, in behaviour, in relationship, and also a process of enquiry that leads to something untouched by thought. I would say that is culture. (p.445)
When one realises that the actor is the action, then the whole outlook changes. (p.446)
If one observes very carefully, facts in themselves bring about a change.
We are always trying to move away from sorrow. Can we understand the depth and meaning of sorrow ? Not intellectually understand, but actually delve into the nature of sorrow ? (p.447)
Fact is that which has been done and which is being done now. The acting now and that which has happened, is the fact. (p.448)
Attention itself dissipates the movement. (p.449)
Insight is not a matter of memory, knowledge, or time, which are all parts of thought. I would say insight is the total absence of the whole movement of thought, time, and remembrance. So that there is direct perception. (p.450)
Are we aware that we are prisoners of our own fantasies ?
If we are aware – they are burnt out. (p.451)
Just be aware, not hold it. It is like a perfume – it is there. You don’t hold it. That is why I think one has to understand the whole conditioning of our consciousness. I think that is the real enquiry. The real exploration is into consciousness, which is the common ground of all humanity. And we never enquire into it. We never say, ‘I am going to study this consciousness that is “me”.’
And to be free of the self is one of the most difficult things, because the ‘,e’ hides under different rocks, in different crevices. (p.451-452)
The brain is conditioned. That conditioning is brought about by knowledge, memory, experience. The brain is limited. So to discover something new there has to be a period, even temporarily, when thought is not in movement, when it is in abeyance. (p.454)
The present is the past and the future. The present is moving. The present is a thousand years of the past being modified, and the future is ‘now’, the present.
The present is the whole movement of time and thought.
Can one have insight, perception into the fact, that the now is all time and thought ? (p.455)
The brain is conditioned by time and thought. So long as conditioning exists, insight is not possible. You may have an occasional insight, but this insight we speak about is the comprehension of totality, a perception of completeness.
This insight is not bound by time – thought.
Insight is possible only with the cessation of thought and time. Thought and time are limited. Therefore in such limitation there cannot be insight.
Time and thought have divided the world. (p.456)
The present is the ‘now’. In that is the whole movement of time-thought, the whole structure of time-thought ends. The ‘now’ then has a totally different meaning. ‘Now’, then, is ‘nothing’. Nothing in the sense that zero contains all the numbers. So ‘nothing’ contains all. But we are afraid to be nothing. (p.457-458)
The self is a bundle of memories; memories that are dead. They function, but they arise from a past that is over. If I have insight into that, it ends. I see that in the ‘now’ there is ‘nothing’.
It is possible to so listen, when the mind itself is totally still.
When the brain is active, it is noise. It is very interesting to enquire into sound. Pure sound can only exist when there is space and silence. Otherwise it is just noise.
All education, knowledge, is a movement in becoming, psychologically as well as outwardly. Becoming is the accumulation of the memory. This we call knowledge. So long as that movement exists, there is fear of being nothing. But when one sees the illusion of becoming, and that becoming is endless time, thought, and conflict, there is an ending of that. An ending of the movement of the psyche which is time-thought. The ending of that is to be ‘nothing’.
‘Nothing’ then contains the whole universe. Not my petty little fears, anxieties, sorrow.
‘Nothing’ means the entire world of compassion. Compassion is ‘nothing’, and that ‘nothingness’ is supreme intelligence.
But we are frightened of being nothing. Do I see that I am nothing but a walking illusion, that I am nothing but dead memories ? So can I be free of memory as time-thought and see the fact that as long as there is this movement of becoming, there must be endless conflict, pain ?
There must be no shadow of time and thought. That is real meditation. (p.458)
We offer a hundred commentaries, but the actual fact is, we are ‘nothing’ except a lot of words. Can one grasp that the zero contains all the numbers ? So in ‘nothing’ all the world exists. (p.459)
If you want to end sorrow there has to be an ending of the ‘me’. (p.460)
Do you see that you are a human being related to all human beings ? the body does not divide. It never says, ‘I am’. It is thought that separates.
Motive distorts perception.
To find out what is the root of chaos, the mind must be free. (p.461)
A good mind has no self. When a mind is in a state of complete attention, attending, listening, then there is no place in it for the self.
A good mind must have compassion. It must have a great sense of beauty and be capable of action; there must be a relationship which is right. (p.462)
The brain extends the physical time into the inner psychological sphere, because the brain is conditioned to linear time in the outer. As it is conditioned to that, it accepts psychological time in the within. I am questioning that illusion that conditions the brain. The brain is accustomed to the movement of becoming. It looks at itself as a movement in time. It operates in this illusion. The brain is evolved in time, and so looks at everything in terms of time. ‘I am, I was’, modified into, ‘I will be’.
There is no time. Physical time we know as movement. There is no way of measuring physical time without movement. If there were no movement in the psyche, as thought, the wheel of time ends. (p.468)
Movement, as we know, is friction. Movement is the deteriorating factor. It is like a piston in an engine. Any movement in the brain physically wears out the brain. It is the psychological process that affects the body and the brain. It is not the other way around.
If there is no psychological movement, then movement is as in absolute space, there is no friction.
If there is no movement as thought, there is no becoming. Becoming creates duality. Therefore there is conflict, deterioration, time. Time is the barrier, is limitation. Only a spaceship that is moving without friction can go to the limitless.
The body has its own intelligence.
The brain is memory. Remorse, guilt, are a constant movement in the brain, as memory. The brain is memory, a movement from the past through the present to the future. (p.469)
The heart beats without remembrance. The brain can function without movement, if allowed to do so by thought. The heart doesn’t pump because of knowledge.
The brain has sought security through knowledge.
Knowledge has made the ground of the brain very limited. (p.470)
Any movement means duality.
When the brain is silent, the mind operates. That is the intelligence of the universe.
An insight into the operation of limitation frees the brain from limitation. Insight can only arise when there is no memory, and so no time. When the whole brain is operating, it has no direction. It is free of the past. Insight is mind operating on brain. (p.471)
Love is outside the brain. Love is not a sensation. Insight is not a sensation. It is not a reaction. (p.472)
Evolution is time.
Time is matter. Time is manifested energy. The very manifestation is a process of time. (p.474)
Perception requires an ending of the past. Perception is timeless.
Perception is not of time. It does not contain the past. (p.475)
Perception has no perceiver. Perception is ‘now’ – therefore it is timeless. Therefore action born of perception is timeless. (p.476)
Listening is not of time. If I listen, it is ‘now’. Listening has no time.
In probing the mind rids itself of all concept, all theories, all hopes, desires. It is now in a state of purity. In that state you can enquire. (p.478)
I would like to separate the brain and the mind. The brain is conditioned. The mind is outside the brain. Mind, for me, is something totally unrelated to the conditioned brain and therefore something which is not measurable by words or by thought. Whereas the brain activity and the wastage of the brain activity is measurable and measure is time. Now any function arising from accumulated knowledge is the known – as myself, my ego, my self-centered activity. Now, is it possible not to be self-centered ?
The self, the ‘me’, is the product of time – evolution. It is the activity of the self-centered brain as my position, my power. It is the ‘me’. And as long as there is that ‘me’ which is accumulated knowledge, memory, experience, there is the limitation of time. (p.479)
The moment you acknowledge you are living, you set the whole process of the self in operation.
In attention there is no self. (p.480)
Attention has no background. (p.481)
When there is attention, there is no background.
I say love has no time. Love has no reminiscences. Love is not the activity of desire or pleasure. The activity of desire and pleasure involves time. Love has no time.
If there is an arising and ending, it is not love.
Where love is, time is not. (p.483)
Death has no time. (p.484)
I have lived with death and life together, all the time, all my life. Because I don’t own anything, I don’t possess anything inwardly. I am dying and living at the same time. There is no separation for me. (p.486)
When you die a part of me is also dying.
I know what it means to die. I have lived my life dying and living, never separating the two. (p.487)
Look what religions have done: concentrated on the teacher and forgotten the teaching. Why do we give such importance to the person of the teacher ? The teacher may be necessary to manifest the teaching, but beyond that, what ? The vase contains water: you have to drink the water, not worship the vase. Humanity worships the vase, forgets the water. (p.488)
The human tendency is to center everything around the person of the teacher – not on the essence of what he says, but the person. That is the great corruption. Look at the great teachers of the world – Mohammed, Christ, and the Buddha too. Look what their followers have made of it ? Buddhists monks are violent, they kill. Contrary to all that the Buddha had said. (p.488-489)
The manifestation has to take place, through a human body, naturally – the manifestation is not the teaching. We must be extraordinarily impersonal about all this. To see that we do not project the teacher because of one’s love and affection for the person, and forget the teaching. See the truth in the teaching, the depth in it, go into it, live it, that is what is important.
Words are limited; all experiences are limited. They cover a very small area.
Energy has no past.
When there is that energy, not bound by the self, energy has no time. It is energy. (p.489)
He starts the morning with yogic asanas and pranayam. For thirty-five minutes he does his pranayams, his breathing exercises, and forty-five minutes are spent on yoga asanas. (p.492)
The saffron or ochre robe of the ascetic evokes deep compassion within him. (p.494)
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