On Self Knowledge

On Self Knowledge

Third Talk in Rajahmundry 1949
There will be a discussion tomorrow morning at 7:45, and also on Tuesday at the same time; but there will be no talk next Sunday. This is the last talk.
I have said that there is an art in listening, and perhaps I can go a little more into it, because I think it is important to listen rightly. We generally hear what we want to hear and exclude everything that is disturbing. To any expression of a disturbing idea we turn a deaf ear, and especially in matters that are profound, religious, that have significance in life, we are apt to listen very superficially. If we hear at all, it is merely the words, not the content of the words, because most of us do not want to be disturbed. Most of us want to carry on in our old ways because to alter, to bring about a change, means disturbance: disturbance in our daily life, disturbance in our family, disturbance between wife and husband, between ourselves and society. As most of us are disinclined to be disturbed, we prefer to follow the easy way of existence; and whether it leads to misery, to turmoil and conflict, is apparently of very little importance. All that we want is an easy life - not too much trouble, not too much disturbance, not too much thinking; and so, when we listen, we are not really hearing anything. Most of us are afraid to hear deeply, but it is only when we hear deeply, when the sounds penetrate deeply, that there is a possibility of a fundamental, radical change. Such change is not possible if you listen superficially, and if I may suggest, at least for this evening, please try to listen without any resistance, without any prejudice - just listen. Do not make tremendous effort to understand, because understanding does not come through effort, understanding does not come through striving. Understanding comes swiftly, unknowingly, when the effort is passive; only when the maker of effort is silent does the wave of understanding come. So, if I may suggest, listen as you would listen to the water that is flowing by. You are not imagining, you are not making an effort to listen, you are just listening. Then the sound conveys its own meaning, and that understanding is far deeper, far greater, and more lasting than the mere understanding of words that comes through intellectual effort. The understanding of words which is called intellectual comprehension is utterly empty. You say, "I understand intellectually, but I cannot put it into practice," which means, really, that you do not understand. When you understand, you understand the content; there is no intellectual understanding. Intellectual understanding is merely a verbal understanding. Hearing the words is not the understanding of their content. The word is not the thing. The word is not understanding. Understanding comes when the mind has ceased to make an effort, which means, when it does not put up a resistance, when it is not prejudiced but listens freely and fully. And, if I may suggest, that is what we should try to do this evening, because then there is in listening a great delight - like listening to a poem, to a song, or seeing the movement of a tree. Then that very observation, listening, gives a tremendous significance to existence.
Religion, surely, is the uncovering of reality. Religion is not belief. Religion is not the search for truth. The search for truth is merely the fulfillment of belief. Religion is the understanding of the thinker; for what the thinker is, that he creates. Without understanding the process of the thinker and the thought, merely to be caught in a dogma is surely not the uncovering of the beauty of life, of existence, of truth. If you seek truth, then you already know truth. If you go out seeking something, the implication is that you have lost it, which means you already know what it is. What you do know is belief, and belief is not truth. No amount of belief, no amount of tradition, none of the religious ceremonies in which there are so many preconceptions of truth, lead to religion. Nor is religion the belief, the God of the irreligious, of the believer who does not believe.
Religion, surely, is allowing truth to come into being, whatever that truth is - not the truth that you want, for then it is merely the gratification of a particular desire which you call belief. So, it is necessary to have a mind that is capable of receiving whatever the truth is, and such a mind is possible only when you listen passively. Passive awareness comes into being when there is no effort, no suppression or sublimation, because after all, to receive, there must be a mind that is not burdened with opinion or busy with its own chatter. Out of an opinion or a belief the mind can project an idea or an image of God; but it is a projection of itself, of its own chatter, of its own fabrication, and therefore it is not real. The real cannot be projected or invited, but can come into being only when the mind, the thinker, understands himself. Without understanding the thought and the thinker, there is no possibility of receiving truth, because the maker of effort is the thought, which is the thinker. Without thought, there is no thinker; and the thinker, seeking further security, takes refuge in an idea which he calls God, religion. But that is not religion, that is merely an extension of his own egotism, a projection of himself. It is a projected righteousness, a projected respectability, and this respectability cannot receive that which is truth. Most of us are very respectable in the political, economic, or religious sense. We want to be something, here or in another world. The desire for existence in another world, in a different form, is still self-projection; it is still the worship of oneself, and such a projection is surely not religion. Religion is something much wider, much deeper than the projections of the self, and after all, your belief is a projection. Your ideals are self-projections, whether national or religious, and the following of such projections is obviously the gratification of the self and therefore the enclosing of the mind within a belief; therefore, it is not real. Reality comes into being only when the mind is still, not made still. Therefore, there must be no disciplining of the mind to be still. When you discipline yourself, it is merely a projected desire to be in a particular state. Such a state is not the state of passivity. Religion is the understanding of the thinker and the thought, which means the understanding of action in relationship. The understanding of action in conduct is religion, not the worship of some idea, however gratifying, however traditional, whoever has said it. Religion is understanding the beauty, the depth, the extensive significance of action in relationship. Because, after all, life is relationship; to be is to be related - otherwise you have no existence. You cannot live in isolation. You are related to your friends, to your family, to those with whom you work. Even though you withdraw to a mountain, you are related to the man who brings food; you are related to an idea which you have projected. Existence implies being, which is relationship, and if we do not understand that relationship, there is no understanding of reality. But because relationship is painful, disturbing, constantly changing in its demands, we escape from it to what we call God, which we think is the pursuit of reality. The pursuer cannot pursue the real. He can only pursue his own ideal, which is self-projected. So, our relationship and the understanding of it is true religion and nothing else is, because in that relationship is contained the whole significance of existence. In relationship, whether with people, with nature, with the trees, with the stars, with ideas, with the state - in that relationship is the whole uncovering of the thinker and the thought, which is man, which is mind. The self comes into being through the focus of conflict; the focusing of conflict gives self-consciousness to the mind. Otherwise there is no self, and though you may place that self on a high level, it is still the self of gratification.
So, the man who would receive reality - not seek reality - who would hear the voice of the eternal, whatever that eternal is, must understand relationship; because in relationship there is conflict, and it is that conflict which prevents the real. That is, in conflict there is the fixing of selfconsciousness, which seeks to eschew, to escape conflict; but only when the mind understands conflict is it capable of receiving the real. So, without understanding relationship, the pursuit of the real is the pursuit of an escape, is it not? Why not face it? Without understanding the actual, how can you go beyond? You may close your eyes, you may run away to shrines and worship empty images; but the worship, the devotion, the puja, the giving of flowers, the sacrifices, the ideals, beliefs - all that has no meaning without understanding the conflict in relationship. So, the understanding of conflict in relationship is of primary importance and nothing else, for in that conflict you discover the whole process of the mind. Without knowing yourself as you are, not as you are technically supposed to be - God enclosed in matter, or whatever the theory is - but actually, in the conflict of daily existence, economic, social, and ideological - without understanding that conflict, how can you go beyond and find something? The search for the beyond is merely an escape from what is, and if you want to escape, then religion or God is as good an escape as drink. Don't object to this putting drink and God on the same level. All escapes are on the same level, whether you escape through drink, through puja, or whatever it be.
So, the understanding of conflict in relationship is of primary importance and nothing else, because out of that conflict we create the world in which we live every day - the misery, the poverty, the ugliness of existence. Relationship is response to the movement of life. That is, life is a constant challenge, and when the response is inadequate, there is conflict; but to respond immediately, truly, adequately to the challenge, brings about a completeness. In that response which is adequate to the challenge there is the cessation of conflict, and therefore it is important to understand oneself, not in abstraction, but in actuality, in everyday existence. What you are in daily life is of the highest importance; not what you think about or what you have ideas about, but how you behave to your wife, to your husband, to your children, to your employees. Because, from what you are, you create the world. Conduct is not an ideal conduct. There is no ideal conduct. Conduct is what you are from moment to moment, how you behave from moment to moment. The ideal is an escape from what you are. How can you go far when you do not know what is near you, when you are not aware of your wife? Surely, you must begin near to go far, but nevertheless, your eyes are fixed on the horizon, which you call religion, and you have all the paraphernalia of belief to help you to escape.
So, what is important is not how to escape because any escape is as good as another - the religious escapes and the worldly escapes are all the same - and escapes do not solve our problem. Our problem is conflict, not only the conflict between individuals, but the world conflict. We see what is happening in the world - the increasing conflict of war, of destruction, of misery. That you cannot stop; all you can do is to alter your relationship with the world, not the world of Europe or America, but the world of your wife, your husband, your work, your home. There you can bring change, and that change moves in wider and wider circles, but without this fundamental change there can be no peace of mind. You may sit in a corner or read something to put yourself to sleep, which most people call meditation, but that is not the uncovering, the receiving of the real. What most of us want is a satisfying escape; we do not want to face our conflicts because they are too painful. They are painful only because we never look to see what they are all about; we seek something which we call God but never look into the cause of conflict. But if we understand the conflict of everyday existence, then we can go further, because therein lies the whole significance of life. A mind that is in conflict is a destructive mind, a wasteful mind, and those in conflict can never understand; but conflict is not stilled by any sanctions, beliefs, or disciplines, because the conflict itself has to be understood. Our problem is in relationship, which is life, and religion is the understanding of that life, which brings about a state in which the mind is quiet. Such a mind is capable of receiving the real. That, after all, is religion - not your sacred threads, your pujas, your repetition of words, phrases, and ceremonies. Surely, all that is not religion. Those are divisions, but a mind that is understanding relationship has no division. The belief that life is one is merely an idea and, therefore, has no value; but for a man who is understanding relationship, there is no "outsider" or "insider," there is neither the foreigner nor the one who is near. Relationship is the process of understanding oneself, and to understand oneself from moment to moment in daily life is self-knowledge. Self-knowledge is not a religion, an ultimate end. There is no such thing as an ultimate end. There is such a thing for the man who wants to escape, but the understanding of relationship, in which there is ever-unfolding self-knowledge, is immeasurable.
So, self-knowledge is not the knowledge of the self placed at some high level; it is from moment to moment in daily conduct, which is action, which is relationship; and without that self-knowledge there is no right thinking. You have no basis for right thinking if you do not know what you are. You cannot know yourself in abstraction, in ideology. You can know yourself only in relationship in your daily life. Don't you know that you are in conflict? And what is the good of going away from it, of avoiding it, like a man who has a poison in his system which he does not reject and who is therefore slowly dying? So, self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom, and without that self-knowledge you cannot go far; and to seek the absolute, God, truth, or what you will, is merely the search after a self-projected gratification. Therefore, you must begin near and search every word that you speak, search every gesture, the way you talk, the way you act, the way you eat - be aware of everything without condemnation; then in that awareness you will know what actually is and the transformation of what is - which is the beginning of liberation. Liberation is not an end. Liberation is from moment to moment in the understanding of what is - when the mind is free, not made free. It is only a free mind that can discover, not a mind molded by a belief or shaped according to a hypothesis. Such a mind cannot discover. There can be no freedom if there is conflict, for conflict is the fixing of the self in relationship.
Many questions have been sent in, and naturally it is impossible to answer them all. We have therefore chosen some which seem to be representative, and if your question is not answered, don't feel that it has been overlooked. After all, all problems are related, and if I can understand one problem in its entirety, then I can understand all the related problems. So, listen to these questions as you would listen to the talk, because questions are a challenge, and only in responding to them adequately do we find the problems resolved. They are a challenge to you as well as to me, and therefore, let us think them out together and respond fully.
Question: What is right education? As teachers and as parents, we are confused.
Krishnamurti: Now, how are we going to find the truth of this matter? Merely forcing the mind into a system, a pattern, is obviously not education. So, to discover what is right education, we must find out what we mean by "education." Surely, education is not to learn the purpose of life, but to understand the meaning, the significance, the process of existence; because if you say life has a purpose, then the purpose is self-projected. Surely, to find out what is right education, you have first to inquire into the whole significance of life, of living. What is present education? Learning to earn a few rupees, acquiring a trade, becoming an engineer, a sociologist, learning how to butcher people, or how to read a poem. If you say education is to make a person efficient, which means to give him technical knowledge, then you must understand the whole significance of efficiency. What happens when a person becomes more and more efficient? He becomes more and more ruthless. Don't laugh. What are you doing in your daily life? What is happening, now in the world? Education means the development of a particular technique, which is efficiency, which means industrialization, the capacity to work faster and produce more and more, all of which ultimately leads to war. You see this happening every day. Education as it is leads to war, and what is the point of education? To destroy or be destroyed. So, obviously, the present system of education is utterly futile. Therefore, what is important is to educate the educator. These are not clever statements to be listened to and laughed off. Because, without educating the teacher, what can he teach the child except the exploiting principles on which he himself has been brought up? Most of you have read many books. Where are you? You have money or can earn it, you have your pleasures and ceremonies - and you are in conflict; and what is the point of education, of learning to earn a few rupees, when your whole existence leads to misery and war? So, right education, surely, must begin with the educator, the parent, the teacher; and inquiry into right education means inquiry into life, into existence, does it not? What is the point of your being educated as a lawyer if you are only going to increase conflict and maintain litigation? But there is money in that, and you thrive on it. So, if you want to bring about right education, you must obviously understand the meaning, the significance, of existence. It is not only to earn money, to have leisure, but to be able to think directly, truly - not "consistently," because to think consistently is merely to conform to a pattern. A consistent thinker is a thoughtless person; he merely repeats certain phrases and thinks in a groove. To find out what is right education, there must be the understanding of existence, which means the understanding of yourself, because you cannot understand existence abstractly. You cannot understand yourself by theorizing as to what education should be. Surely, right education begins with the right understanding of the educator. Look at what is happening in the world. Governments are taking control of education - naturally, because all governments are preparing for war. Your pet government, as well as the foreign government, must inevitably prepare for war. A sovereign government must have an army, a navy, an air force; and to make the citizens efficient for war, to prepare them to perform their duties thoroughly, efficiently, ruthlessly, the central government must control them. Therefore, they educate them as they manufacture mechanical instruments, to be ruthlessly efficient. If that is the purpose and end of education - to destroy or be destroyed - then it must be ruthless, and I am not at all sure that that is not what you want. Because, you are still educating your children in the same old fashion. Right education begins with the understanding of the educator, the teacher, which means that he must be free of established patterns of thought. Education is not merely imparting information, knowing how to read, gathering and correlating facts; but it is seeing the whole significance of education, of government, of the world situation, of the totalitarian spirit which is becoming more and more dominant throughout the world. Being confused, you create the educator who is also confused, and through so-called education you give power to destroy the foreign government. Therefore, before you ask what right education is, you must understand yourself, and you will see that it does not take a long time to understand yourself if you are interested to find out. Sir, without understanding yourself as the educator, how can you bring about a new kind of education? Therefore, we come back to the eternal point - which is yourself - and you want to avoid that point; you want to shift the responsibility onto the teacher, onto the government. The government is what you are, the world is what you are; and without understanding yourself, how can there be right education?
Question: What do you mean by living from moment to moment?
Krishnamurti: A thing that continues can never be new. Just think it out and you will see - it is not a complicated problem. Surely, if I can complete each day and not carry over my worries, my tribulations, to the next, then I can meet tomorrow afresh. Meeting the challenge afresh is creation, and there can be no creation without ending. That is, you meet the new with the old; therefore, there must be an ending of the old to meet the new. There must be an ending every minute, so that every minute is a new one. That is not a poetical imagination or indulgence. If you try, you will find out what happens. But, you see, we want to continue. We want to have continuation from moment to moment, from day to day, because we think without continuation we cannot exist.
Now, that which is capable of continuing, can that renew itself? Can that be new? Surely, there can be a new thing only when there is an ending. Your thought is continuous. Thought is the result of the past, thought is founded upon the past; it is a continuance of the past, which in conjunction with the present creates, modifies, the future. But the past, through the present to the future, is still a continuity. There is no break. It is only when there is a break that you can see something new. Merely to continue the past, modified by the present, is not to perceive the new. Therefore, thought cannot perceive the new. Thought must end for the new to be. But, you see what we are doing. We are using the present as a passage from the past to the future. Are we not doing that? To us, the present is not important. Thought, which is the present action, which is the present relationship, we do not think is important. We think what is important is the outcome, the result of thought, which is the future or the past. Have you not noticed how the old look to the past, and also how the young sometimes look to the past or to the future? They are occupied with themselves in the past or in the future but never give their full attention to the present. So, we use the present as a passage way to something else, and therefore there is no consideration, no observation of the present; and to observe the present, the past must end. Surely, to see what is, you cannot look through the past to the present. If I want to understand you, I must look at you directly, I must not bring up my past prejudices and through those prejudices look at you. Then I am only looking at my prejudices. I can look at you only when the prejudices are not; therefore, there must be an end to prejudices.
So, to understand what is, which is action, which is relationship at every moment, there must be a freshness; therefore, there must be an ending of the past, and this is not a theory. Experiment with it, and you will see that this ending is not as difficult as you think. While you are listening, try it, and you will see how easily and completely you can end thought and so discover. That is, when you are not induced, when you are interested in something vitally, profoundly, you are looking at it anew. The very interest drives away the past. You are only concerned to observe what is and to allow what is to tell its story. When you see the truth of this, your mind is emptied from moment to moment. Therefore, the mind is discovering everything anew, and that is why knowledge can never be new. It is only wisdom that is new. Knowledge can be taught in a school, but wisdom cannot be taught. A school of wisdom is nonsense. Wisdom is the discovery and the understanding of what is from moment to moment, and how can you be taught to observe what is? If you are taught, it is knowledge, then knowledge intervenes between you and the fact. Therefore, knowledge is a barrier to the new, and a mind full of knowledge cannot understand what is. You are learned, are you not? And is your mind new? Or is it filled up with memorized facts? And a mind which becomes more and more a mere accumulation of facts - how can such a mind see anything new? To see what is new, there must be an emptiness of past knowledge. Only in the discovery of what is from moment to moment is there the freedom which wisdom brings. Therefore, wisdom is something new, not repetitive, not something which you learn out of a school book or from Shankara, the Bhagavad-Gita, or Christ.
So, knowledge which is continued is a barrier to understanding the new. If in listening you bring in your previous knowledge, how can you understand? First you must listen. Sir, an engineer has knowledge of stresses and strains, but if he comes to build a bridge, he must first study the location and the soil. He must look at it independently of the structure which he is going to build, which means he must regard it anew, not merely copy from a book. But there is a danger in similes, so use it lightly. What is important is that there be a renewal in which there can be creation, that creative impulse, that sense of constant rebirth, and that can come into being only when there is death every minute. Such a mind can receive that which is truth. Truth is not something absolute, final, far away. It is to be discovered from moment to moment, and you cannot discover it in a state of continuity. There can be no freedom in continuity. After all, continuity is memory, and how can memory be new? How can memory, which is experience, which is the past, understand the present? Only when the past is wholly understood and the mind is empty is it capable of seeing the present in all its significance. But most of our minds are not empty. They are filled with knowledge, and such a mind is not a thinking mind. It is only a repetitive mind, a gramophone changing the records according to circumstances. Such a mind is incapable of discovering the new. There is the new only in ending, but you are afraid of that. You are afraid of ending, and all your talk, your accumulation of facts, is merely a safeguard, an escape from that. Therefore, you are seeking continuity, but continuity is never new; in it there can be no renewal, no emptiness in which you can receive. So, the mind can renew itself only when it is empty, not when it is filled with your worries from day to day, and when the mind has come to an end, there is a creation which is timeless.
Question: The more I listen to you, the more I feel the truth of the ancient teachings of Christ, Shankara, the Bhagavad-Gita, and Theosophy. Have you really not read any of them?
Krishnamurti: I will first answer the second part of the question and then take up the first part. "Have you really not read any of them?" No, sir, I have not read any of them. What is wrong with that? Are you surprised? Are you shocked? And why should you read them? Why do you want to read others' books when there is the book of yourself? Why do you want to read the Bible or Shankara? Surely, because you want confirmation, you want to conform. That is why most people read - to be confirmed in what they believe or what they express, to be sure, to be safe, to be certain. Can you discover anything in certainty? Obviously not. A man who is certain psychologically can never discover. So, why do you read? You may read for mere amusement or to accumulate facts; or you read to acquire what you call wisdom, and you think you have understood everything because you can quote Shankara; you think by quoting Shankara you have got the full significance of life. The man who quotes is a thoughtless man because he is merely repeating what somebody has said. Sirs, if you had no book, no Bhagavad-Gita, no Shankara, what would you do? You would have to take the journey by yourself into the unknown, you would have to venture out alone. When you discover something, what you discover is yours; then you need no book. I have not read the Bhagavad-Gita nor any of the religious, psychological, or philosophical books, but I have discovered something, and that discovery can come only in freedom, not through repetition. That discovery is far greater than the experience of another, because discovery is not repetition, not copy.
Then, the first part of the question. Sir, why do you compare? What is the process of comparison? Why do you say, "What you say is like Shankara"? Whether it is or is not is unimportant. Truth can never be the same; it is ever new. If it is the same, it is not truth because truth is living from moment to moment; it cannot be today what it was yesterday. But why do you want to compare? Don't you compare in order to feel safe, in order to feel that you do not have to think, since what I say is what Shankara said? You have read Shankara, and you think you have understood; so you compare and relax, which is all very quick and effortless. In fact, you have not understood, and that is why you compare. When you compare, there is no understanding. To understand, you must look directly at the thing that is presented to you, and a mind that compares is a sluggish, wasteful mind; it is a mind that lives in security, that is enclosed in gratification. Such a mind cannot possibly understand truth. Truth is a living thing, not static, and a thing that is living is incomparable; it cannot be compared with the past or with the future. Truth is incomparable from moment to moment, and for a mind that tries to compare it, weigh it, judge it, there is no truth. For such a mind there is only propaganda, repetition; and repetition is a lie, it is not truth. You repeat because you are not experiencing, and a man who is experiencing never repeats, because truth is not repeatable. You cannot repeat truth, but your conclusion, your judgment about it can be repeated. Therefore, a mind that compares, that says, "What you are saying is exactly what Shankara said" - such a mind merely wants to continue and so is enervated, dead.
Sir, there is no song in your heart if you merely repeat a song and therefore follow the singer. What is important is not whether I have read sacred books, or whether what I say is comparable to Shankara, the Bhagavad-Gita, or Christ, but what is important is why you repeat, why you compare. Understand why you compare, then you will be understanding yourself. The understanding of yourself is far more important than your understanding of Shankara, because you are far more important than Shankara or any ideology. It is only through you that you discover truth. You are the discoverer of truth, not Shankara, not the Bhagavad-Gita, which has no meaning - it is only a means of hypnotizing yourself, like reading the newspaper. So, a mind that is capable of receiving truth is a mind that does not compare, for truth is incomparable. To receive truth the mind must be alone, and it is not alone when it is influenced by Shankara or Buddha. Therefore all influence, all conditioning must cease. Only in that state when all knowledge has ceased is there an ending and therefore the aloneness of truth.
Question: What exactly do you mean by meditation? Is it a process or a state?
Krishnamurti: Though I talk and you listen, let us experience and discover together what is meditation. I am not going to teach you how to meditate, but together let us find out what is meditation. So, listen and experience as we go along, for words have meaning only when we move, when we journey together.
What is -meditation? Meditation is the understanding of the meditator; the meditator is the meditation. Meditation is not exclusion, concentration. What do you mean by concentration? I am going to explain. We are taking a journey together. You are discovering and I am discovering, and the important thing is to discover, not merely to copy, to follow. Most of us consider that concentration is meditation, but it is not, and I will show you why it is not. Concentration means exclusion - focusing on one interest to the exclusion of other interests. You concentrate and resist, so concentration is the focusing of resistance. You try to concentrate on a picture, on an image, on an idea, and your mind wanders to other interests; and the exclusive resistance of the various interests you call meditation. Surely, that concentration is not meditation, because in that effort there is conflict between that which resists and that which encroaches. That is, you spend your time in resisting, in battling, in disciplining against something. You spend days and years in this battle until at last you can focus your mind on the object of your desire. The object of your desire is self-projected, it is part of the thought process, it is of your own creation, and on that you try to focus; so, you are concentrating upon yourself, though you call it the ideal. Therefore it is an enclosing, exclusive process.
Now, meditation is not exclusion. We are discovering what meditation is interrogatively; to say what it is, is merely to copy. Only when you say what it is not, you say what it is. So, concentration is not meditation. When a schoolboy is interested in a toy, he has concentration. Surely, that is not meditation. The toy is not God, and the pursuit of virtue is not meditation. Let us see then what that means. The cultivation of virtue - is that virtue? To cultivate goodness - is that virtue? To say "I am going to be brotherly" and meditate upon brotherliness - is that virtue? Such meditation upon virtue is merely self-calculation. Virtue implies freedom, and you are not free when you are plotting to become virtuous. So, the man who meditates daily to become virtuous is not virtuous. It is a cloak, which is mere respectability. Sir, when you talk of humility, are you really humble, or are you only taking the cloak of humility? Do you know what it is to be humble? You cannot cultivate it. You cannot cultivate non-greediness. Because you are greedy, you want to be nongreedy. How can stupidity become intelligence? Where there is stupidity, there is no intelligence. Stupidity is what it is under all circumstances. Only with the ending of stupidity is there intelligence; only with the ending of greed is there freedom from greed. Therefore, virtue is freedom, not becoming something, which is endless continuity.
So, we see that concentration is not meditation, that pursuit of virtue is not meditation. Devotion obviously is not meditation, for the object of your devotion is self-projected. Your ideal is the outcome of your own thinking. Obviously, sir, your ideal is self-projected, is it not? You are this, and you want to become that. The that of your becoming is out of yourself, out of your own desire. You are violent, and you want to become nonviolent. The ideal is within yourself. Therefore, your ideal is homemade. Therefore, when you give your devotion to the ideal, you are giving devotion to the thing which you have created. So, your devotion is self-gratification. You are not devoted to something which you do not like, which is painful. You are devoted to something which gives you pleasure, which means, obviously, that it is self-created, and therefore that is not meditation. And it is not meditation to search for truth, because you cannot search for something which you do not know. You can only search for that which you know. If you know truth, it is no longer truth. What you know is the outcome of the past, of memory, therefore it is not truth. Therefore, when you say, "Through meditation I am seeking truth," you are merely burdening the mind with your own creation, which is not truth. So, concentration, devotion, the pursuit of virtue, the search for truth, is not meditation. Then, what is meditation? The things that we have been doing regularly, practicing, disciplining, forcing the mind - obviously all that is not meditation because in it there is no freedom, and only in freedom can truth come into being. Nor is prayer meditation, as we have discussed previously. When all that superstructure is removed from the mind - the pursuit of the ideal, the search for truth, the becoming virtuous, the concentration, the effort, the discipline, the condemning, the judging - when all that is gone, what is the mind? When that is not, the meditator is not; therefore, there is meditation. When the meditator is not, there is meditation, but the meditator can never meditate. He can only meditate upon himself, project himself, think about himself, but he knows no meditation. When the meditator understands himself and comes to an end, only then is there meditation, for the ending of the meditator is meditation. Concentration, seeking truth, becoming virtuous, condemning, judging, disciplining - all that is the process of the meditator, and without understanding the process of the meditator, there is no meditation. Therefore, without self-knowledge there is no meditation. There is no meditation without tranquillity of mind, but tranquillity does not come about through the seeking or the directing of the meditator. When the whole, total process of the meditator is not, then there is a silence that is not brought about by the mind as an idea, as an ideal, which is self-projected gratification. But when the projector, the meditator, the self, is completely absent, wholly ended, then there is silence which is not the product of the mind. Meditation is that silence which comes into being when the meditator and his processes are understood. That silence is inexhaustible; it is not of time, therefore it is immeasurable. Only the meditator compares, judges, measures; but when the measurement is not, the immeasurable is. Therefore, only when the mind is completely silent, completely still, tranquil, not projecting, not thinking - only then does the measureless come into being. But that measureless is not to be thought of. What you think about is the known, and the known cannot understand the unknown. Therefore, only when the known ends does the unknown come into being. Then only is there bliss.
December 4, 1949

Freedom From the Known Chapter 6

Freedom From the Known Chapter 6

FEAR, PLEASURE, SORROW, thought and violence are all interrelated. Most of us take pleasure in violence, in disliking somebody, hating a particular race or group of people, having antagonistic feelings towards others. But in a state of mind in which all violence has come to an end there is a joy which is very different from the pleasure of violence with its conflicts, hatreds and fears.
Can we go to the very root of violence and be free from it? Otherwise we shall live everlastingly in battle with each other. If that is the way you want to live - and apparently most people do - then carry on; if you say, `Well, I'm sorry, violence can never end', then you and I have no means of communication, you have blocked yourself; but if you say there might be a different way of living, then we shall be able to communicate with each other.
So let us consider together, those of us who can communicate, whether it is at all possible totally to end every form of violence in ourselves and still live in this monstrously brutal world. I think it is possible. I don't want to have a breath of hate, jealousy, anxiety or fear in me. I want to live completely at peace. Which doesn't mean that I want to die. I want to live on this marvellous earth, so full, so rich, so beautiful. I want to look at the trees, flowers, rivers, meadows, women, boys and girls, and at the same time live completely at peace with myself and with the world. What can I do?
If we know how to look at violence, not only outwardly in society - the wars, the riots, the national antagonisms and class conflicts - but also in ourselves, then perhaps we shall be able to go beyond it.
Here is a very complex problem. For centuries upon centuries man has been violent; religions have tried to tame him throughout the world and none of them have succeeded. So if we are going into the question we must, it seems to me, be at least very serious about it because it will lead us into quite a different domain, but if we want merely to play with the problem for intellectual entertainment we shall not get very far.
You may feel that you yourself are very serious about the problem but that as long as so many other people in the world are not serious and are not prepared to do anything about it, what is the good of your doing anything? I don't care whether they take it seriously or not. I take it seriously, that is enough. I am not my brother's keeper. I myself, as a human being, feel very strongly about this question of violence and I will see to it that in myself I am not violent - but I cannot tell you or anybody else, `Don't be violent.' It has no meaning - unless you yourself want it. So if you yourself really want to understand this problem of violence let us continue on our journey of exploration together.
Is this problem of violence out there or here? Do you want to solve the problem in the outside world or are you questioning violence itself as it is in you? If you are free of violence in yourself the question is, `How am I to live in a world full of violence, acquisitiveness, greed, envy, brutality? Will I not be destroyed?' That is the inevitable question which is invariably asked. When you ask such a question it seems to me you are not actually living peacefully. If you live peacefully you will have no problem at all. You may be imprisoned because you refuse to join the army or shot because you refuse to fight - but that is not a problem; you will be shot. it is extraordinarily important to understand this.
We are trying to understand violence as a fact, not as an idea, as a fact which exists in the human being, and the human being is myself. And to go into the problem I must be completely vulnerable, open, to it. I must expose myself to myself - not necessarily expose myself to you because you may not be interested - but I must be in a state of mind that demands to see this thing right to the end and at no point stops and says I will go no further.
Now it must be obvious to me that I am a violent human being. I have experienced violence in anger, violence in my sexual demands, violence in hatred, creating enmity, violence in jealousy and so on - I have experienced it, I have known it, and I say to myself, `I want to understand this whole problem not just one fragment of it expressed in war, but this aggression in man which also exists in the animals and of which I am a part.'
Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn't merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence.
When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.
Now there are two primary schools of thought with regard to violence, one which says, `Violence is innate in man' and the other which says, `Violence is the result of the social and cultural heritage in which man lives.' We are not concerned with which school we belong to - it is of no importance. What is important is the fact that we are violent, not the reason for it.
One of the most common expressions of violence is anger. When my wife or sister is attacked I say I am righteously angry; when my country is attacked, my ideas, my principles, my way of life, I am righteously angry. I am also angry when my habits are attacked or my petty little opinions. When you tread on my toes or insult me I get angry, or if you run away with my wife and I get jealous, that jealousy is called righteous because she is my property. And all this anger is morally justified. But to kill for my country is also justified. So when we are talking about anger, which is a part of violence, do we look at anger in terms of righteous and unrighteous anger according to our own inclinations and environmental drive, or do we see only anger? Is there righteous anger ever? Or is there only anger? There is no good influence or bad influence, only influence, but when you are influenced by something which doesn't suit me I call it an evil influence.
The moment you protect your family, your country, a bit of coloured rag called a flag, a belief, an idea, a dogma, the thing that you demand or that you hold, that very protection indicates anger. So can you look at anger without any explanation or justification, without saying, `I must protect my goods', or `I was right to be angry', or `How stupid of me to be angry'? Can you look at anger as if it were something by itself? Can you look at it completely objectively, which means neither defending it nor condemning it? Can you?
Can I look at you if I am antagonistic to you or if I am thinking what a marvellous person you are? I can see you only when I look at you with a certain care in which neither of these things is involved. Now, can I look at anger in the same way, which means that I am vulnerable to the problem, I do not resist it, I am watching this extraordinary phenomenon without any reaction to it?
It is very difficult to look at anger dispassionately because it is a part of me, but that is what I am trying to do. Here I am, a violent human being, whether I am black, brown, white or purple. I am not concerned with whether I have inherited this violence or whether society has produced it in me; all I am concerned with is whether it is at all possible to be free from it. To be free from violence means everything to me. It is more important to me than sex, food, position, for this thing is corrupting me. It is destroying me and destroying the world, and I want to understand it, I want to be beyond it. I feel responsible for all this anger and violence in the world. I feel responsible - it isn't just a lot of words - and I say to myself, `I can do something only if I am beyond anger myself, beyond violence, beyond nationality'. And this feeling I have that I must understand the violence in myself brings tremendous vitality and passion to find out.
But to be beyond violence I cannot suppress it, I cannot deny it, I cannot say, `Well, it is a part of me and that's that', or `I don't want it'. I have to look at it, I have to study it, I must become very intimate with it and I cannot become intimate with it if I condemn it or justify it. We do condemn it, though; we do justify it. Therefore I am saying, stop for the time being condemning it or justifying it.
Now, if you want to stop violence, if you want to stop wars, how much vitality, how much of yourself, do you give to it? Isn't it important to you that your children are killed, that your sons go into the army where they are bullied and butchered? Don't you care? My God, if that doesn't interest you, what does? Guarding your money? Having a good time? Taking drugs? Don't you see that this violence in yourself is destroying your children? Or do you see it only as some abstraction?
All right then, if you are interested, attend with all your heart and mind to find out. Don't just sit back and say, `Well, tell us all about it'. I point out to you that you cannot look at

Freedom From the Known Chapter 5

Freedom From the Known Chapter 5
Before we go any further I would like to ask you what is your fundamental, lasting interest in life? Putting all oblique answers aside and dealing with this question directly and honestly, what would you answer? Do you know?
Isn't it yourself? Anyway, that is what most of us would say if we answered truthfully. I am interested in my progress, my job, my family, the little corner in which I live, in getting a better position for myself, more prestige, more power, more domination over others and so on. I think it would be logical, wouldn't it, to admit to ourselves that that is what most of us are primarily interested in - 'me' first?
Some of us would say that it is wrong to be primarily interested in ourselves. But what is wrong about it except that we seldom decently, honestly, admit it? If we do, we are rather ashamed of it. So there it is - one is fundamentally interested in oneself, and for various ideological or traditional reasons one thinks it is wrong. But what one thinks is irrelevant. Why introduce the factor of its being wrong? That is an idea, a concept. What is a fact is that one is fundamentally and lastingly interested in oneself.
You may say that it is more satisfactory to help another than to think about yourself. What is the difference? It is still self-concern. If it gives you greater satisfaction to help others, you are concerned about what will give you greater satisfaction. Why bring any ideological concept into it? Why this double thinking? Why not say, `What I really want is satisfaction, whether in sex, or in helping others, or in becoming a great saint, scientist or politician'? It is the same process, isn't it? Satisfaction in all sorts of ways, subtle and obvious, is what we want. When we say we want freedom we want it because we think it may be wonderfully satisfying, and the ultimate satisfaction, of course, is this peculiar idea of self-realization. What we are really seeking is a satisfaction in which there is no dissatisfaction at all.
Most of us crave the satisfaction of having a position in society because we are afraid of being nobody. Society is so constructed that a citizen who has a position of respect is treated with great courtesy, whereas a man who has no position is kicked around. Everyone in the world wants a position, whether in society, in the family or to sit on the right hand of God, and this position must be recognized by others, otherwise it is no position at all. We must always sit on the platform. Inwardly we are whirlpools of misery and mischief and therefore to be regarded outwardly as a great figure is very gratifying. This craving for position, for prestige, for power, to be recognized by society as being outstanding in some way, is a wish to dominate others, and this wish to dominate is a form of aggression. The saint who seeks a position in regard to his saintliness is as aggressive as the chicken pecking in the farmyard. And what is the cause of this aggressiveness? It is fear, isn't it?
Fear is one of the greatest problems in life. A mind that is caught in fear lives in confusion, in conflict, and therefore must be violent, distorted and aggressive. It dare not move away from its own patterns of thinking, and this breeds hypocrisy. Until we are free from fear, climb the highest mountain, invent every kind of God, we will always remain in darkness.
Living in such a corrupt, stupid society as we do, with the competitive education we receive which engenders fear, we are all burdened with fears of some kind, and fear is a dreadful thing which warps, twists and dulls our days.
There is physical fear but that is a response we have inherited from the animals. It is psychological fears we are concerned with here, for when we understand the deep-rooted psychological fears we will be able to meet the animal fears, whereas to be concerned with the animal fears first will never help us to understand the psychological fears.
We are all afraid about something; there is no fear in abstraction, it is always in relation to something. Do you know your own fears - fear of losing your job, of not having enough food or money, or what your neighbours or the public think about you, or not being a success, of losing your position in society, of being despised or ridiculed - fear of pain and disease, of domination, of never knowing what love is or of not being loved, of losing your wife or children, of death, of living in a world that is like death, of utter boredom, of not living up to the image others have built about you, of losing your faith - all these and innumerable other fears - do you know your own particular fears? And what do you usually do about them? You run away from them, don't you, or invent ideas and images to cover them? But to run away from fear is only to increase it.
One of the major causes of fear is that we do not want to face ourselves as we are. So, as well as the fears themselves, we have to examine the network of escapes we have developed to rid ourselves of them. If the mind, in which is included the brain, tries to overcome fear, to suppress it, discipline it, control it, translate it into terms of something else, there is friction, there is conflict, and that conflict is a waste of energy.
The first thing to ask ourselves then is what is fear and how does it arise? What do we mean by the word fear itself? I am asking myself what is fear not what I am afraid of.
I lead a certain kind of life; I think in a certain pattern; I have certain beliefs and dogmas and I don't want those patterns of existence to be disturbed because I have my roots in them. I don't want them to be disturbed because the disturbance produces a state of unknowing and I dislike that. If I am torn away from everything I know and believe, I want to be reasonably certain of the state of things to which I am going. So the brain cells have created a pattern and those brain cells refuse to create another pattern which may be uncertain. The movement from certainty to uncertainty is what I call fear.
At the actual moment as I am sitting here I am not afraid; I am not afraid in the present, nothing is happening to me, nobody is threatening me or taking anything away from me. But beyond the actual moment there is a deeper layer in the mind which is consciously or unconsciously thinking of what might happen in the future or worrying that something from the past may overtake me. So I am afraid of the past and of the future. I have divided time into the past and the future. Thought steps in, says, `Be careful it does not happen again', or `Be prepared for the future. The future may be dangerous for you. You have got something now but you may lose it. You may die tomorrow, your wife may run away, you may lose your job. You may never become famous. You may be lonely. You want to be quite sure of tomorrow.'
Now take your own particular form of fear. Look at it. Watch your reactions to it. Can you look at it without any movement of escape, justification, condemnation or suppression? Can you look at that fear without the word which causes the fear? Can you look at death, for instance, without the word which arouses the fear of death? The word itself brings a tremor, doesn't it, as the word love has its own tremor, its own image? Now is the image you have in your mind about death, the memory of so many deaths you have seen and the associating of yourself with those incidents - is it that image which is creating fear? Or are you actually afraid of coming to an end, not of the image creating the end? Is the word death causing you fear or the actual ending? If it is the word or the memory which is causing you fear then it is not fear at all.
You were ill two years ago, let us say, and the memory of that pain, that illness, remains, and the memory now functioning says, `Be careful, don't get ill, again'. So the memory with its associations is creating fear, and that is not fear at all because actually at the moment you have very good health. Thought, which is always old, because thought is the response of memory and memories are always old - thought creates, in time, the feeling that you are afraid which is not an actual fact. The actual fact is that you are well. But the experience, which has remained in the mind as a memory, rouses the thought, `Be careful, don't fall ill again'.
So we see that thought engenders one kind of fear. But is there fear at all apart from that? Is fear always the result of thought and, if it is, is there any other form of fear? We are afraid of death - that is, something that is going to happen tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, in time. There is a distance between actuality and what will be. Now thought has experienced this state; by observing death it says, `I am going to die.' Thought creates the fear of death, and if it doesn't is there any fear at all? Is fear the result of thought? If it is, thought being always old, fear is always old. As we have said, there is no new thought. If we recognise it, it is already old. So what we are afraid of is the repetition of the old - the thought of what has been projecting into the future. Therefore thought is responsible for fear. This is so, you can see it for yourself. When you are confronted with something immediately there is no fear. It is only when thought comes in that there is fear.
Therefore our question now is, is it possible for the mind to live completely, totally, in the present? It is only such a mind that has no fear. But to understand this, you have to understand the structure of thought, memory and time. And in understanding it, understanding not intellectually, not verbally, but actually with your heart, your mind, your guts, you will be free from fear; then the mind can use thought without creating fear.
Thought, like memory, is, of course, necessary for daily living. It is the only instrument we have for communication, working at our jobs and so forth. Thought is the response to memory, memory which has been accumulated through experience, knowledge, tradition, time. And from this background of memory we react and this reaction is thinking. So thought is essential at certain levels but when thought projects itself psychologically as the future and the past, creating fear as well as pleasure, the mind is made dull and therefore inaction is inevitable.
So I ask myself, `Why, why, why, do I think about the future and the past in terms of pleasure and pain, knowing that such thought creates fear? Isn't it possible for thought psychologically to stop, for otherwise fear will never end?'
One of the functions of thought is to be occupied all the time with something. Most of us want to have our minds continually occupied so that we are prevented from seeing ourselves as we actually are. We are afraid to be empty. We are afraid to look at our fears.
Consciously you can be aware of your fears but at the deeper levels of your mind are you aware of them? And how are you going to find out the fears that are hidden, secret? Is fear to be divided into the conscious and the subconscious? This is a very important question. The specialist, the psychologist, the analyst, have divided fear into deep superficial layers, but if you follow what the psychologist says or what I say, you are understanding our theories, our dogmas, our knowledge, you are not understanding yourself. You cannot understand yourself according to Freud or Jung, or according to me. Other people's theories have no importance whatever. It is of yourself that you must ask the question, is fear to be divided into the conscious and subconscious? Or is there only fear which you translate into different forms? There is only one desire; there is only desire. You desire. The objects of desire change, but desire is always the same. So perhaps in the same way there is only fear. You are afraid of all sorts of things but there is only one fear.
When you realize that fear cannot be divided you will see that you have put away altogether this problem of the subconscious and so have cheated the psychologists and the analysts. When you understand that fear is a single movement which expresses itself in different ways and when you see the movement and not the object to which the movement goes, then you are facing an immense question: how can you look at it without the fragmentation which the mind has cultivated?
There is only total fear, but how can the mind which thinks in fragments observe this total picture? Can it? We have lived a life of fragmentation, and can look at that total fear only through the fragmentary process of thought. The whole process of the machinery of thinking is to break up everything into fragments: I love you and I hate you; you are my enemy, you are my friend; my peculiar idiosyncrasies and inclinations, my job, my position, my prestige, my wife, my child, my country and your country, my God and your God - all that is the fragmentation of thought. And this thought looks at the total state of fear, or tries to look at it, and reduces it to fragments. Therefore we see that the mind can look at this total fear only when there is no movement of thought.
Can you watch fear without any conclusion, without any interference of the knowledge you have accumulated about it? If you cannot, then what you are watching is the past, not fear; if you can, then you are watching fear for the first time without the interference of the past.
You can watch only when the mind is very quiet, just as you can listen to what someone is saying only when your mind is not chattering with itself, carrying on a dialogue with itself about its own problems and anxieties. Can you in the same way look at your fear without trying to resolve it, without bringing in its opposite, courage - actually look at it and not try to escape from it? When you say, `I must control it, I must get rid of it, I must understand it', you are trying to escape from it.
You can observe a cloud or a tree or the movement of a river with a fairly quiet mind because they are not very important to you, but to watch yourself is far more difficult because there the demands are so practical, the reactions so quick. So when you are directly in contact with fear or despair, loneliness or jealousy, or any other ugly state of mind, can you look at it so completely that your mind is quiet enough to see it? Can the mind perceive fear and not the different forms of fear - perceive total fear, not what you are afraid of? If you look merely at the details of fear or try to deal with your fears one by one, you will never come to the central issue which is to learn to live with fear.
To live with a living thing such as fear requires a mind and heart that are extraordinarily subtle, that have no conclusion and can therefore follow every movement of fear. Then if you observe and live with it - and this doesn't take a whole day, it can take a minute or a second to know the whole nature of fear - if you live with it so completely you inevitably ask, 'Who is the entity who is living with fear? Who is it who is observing fear, watching all the movements of the various forms of fear as well as being aware of the central fact of fear? Is the observer a dead entity, a static being, who has accumulated a lot of knowledge and information about himself, and is it that dead thing who is observing and living with the movement of fear? Is the observer the past or is he a living thing?' What is your answer? Do not answer me, answer yourself. Are you, the observer, a dead entity watching a living thing or are you a living thing watching a living thing? Because in the observer the two states exist.
The observer is the censor who does not want fear; the observer is the totality of all his experiences about fear. So the observer is separate from that thing he calls fear; there is space between them; he is forever trying to overcome it or escape from it and hence this constant battle between himself and fear - this battle which is such a waste of energy.
As you watch, you learn that the observer is merely a bundle of ideas and memories without any validity or substance, but that fear is an actuality and that you are trying to understand a fact with an abstraction which, of course, you cannot do. But,in fact, is the observer who says, `I am afraid', any different from the thing observed which is fear? The observer is fear and when that is realized there is no longer any dissipation of energy in the effort to get rid of fear, and the time-space interval between the observer and the observed disappears. When you see that you are a part of fear, not separate from it - that you are fear - then you cannot do anything about it; then fear comes totally to an end.
Freedom From the Known

One must inquire

One must inquire
The whole of Asia talks about meditation; it is one of their habits, as it is a habit to believe in God or something else. They sit for ten minutes a day in a quiet room and 'meditate,' concentrate, fix their mind on an image, an image created by themselves, or by somebody who has offered that image through propaganda. During those ten minutes they try to control the mind; the mind wants to go back and forth and they battle with it. They play that game everlastingly, and that is what they call meditation.
If one does not know anything about meditation, then one has to find out what it is actually, not according to anybody, and that may lead one to nothing or it may lead one to everything. One must inquire, ask that question, without any expectation.
Beyond Violence,103

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Một người tôn giáo không tìm kiếm Chúa. Người tôn giáo quan tâm đến sự thay đổi của xã hội mà là chính anh ấy. Người tôn giáo không là người thực hành vô số nghi lễ tôn giáo, tuân theo những truyền thống, sống trong một nền văn hóa quá khứ và không còn chút sinh khí, giải thích không mệt mỏi kinh Gita hay kinh Bible, tụng kinh liên tục, hay thực hiện cuộc sống khất thực – đó không là một người tôn giáo; một người như thế đang tẩu thoát những sự kiện. Người tôn giáo quan tâm tổng thể và trọn vẹn đến hiểu rõ cái xã hội mà là chính anh ấy. Anh ấy không tách rời xã hội. Tạo ra trong chính anh ấy một thay đổi tổng thể, trọn vẹn có nghĩa là kết thúc dứt khoát của tham lam, ganh tị, tham vọng; và vì vậy anh ấy không lệ thuộc những hoàn cảnh thay đổi, mặc dù anh ấy là kết quả của hoàn cảnh – thực phẩm anh ấy ăn, sách báo anh ấy đọc, rạp chiếu bóng anh ấy đi đến, những giáo điều, những niềm tin, những nghi lễ tôn giáo, và mọi chuyện chung quanh anh ấy. Anh ấy có trách nhiệm, và vì vậy người tôn giáo phải hiểu rõ chính anh ấy, mà là sản phẩm của xã hội trong đó chính anh ấy đã tạo ra. Vì vậy để tìm ra sự thật anh ấy phải khởi đầu ở đây, không phải trong một ngôi đền, không phải trong một hình ảnh – dù rằng hình ảnh đó được chạm trỗ bằng tay hay được ghi lại bằng cái trí. Nếu không như thế, làm thế nào anh ấy có thể tìm được một điều gì đó hoàn toàn mới mẻ, một trạng thái mới mẻ?

....Chúng ta giống như người cố gắng đổ đầy nước vào một cái xô có những lỗ thủng.

Jiddu Krishnamurti: "....Chúng ta giống như người cố gắng đổ đầy nước vào một cái xô có những lỗ thủng. Nước được đổ vào càng nhiều bao nhiêu, nó bị càng chảy ra nhiều bấy nhiêu, và cái xô chẳng có giọt nước nào...."
Trích "Một bài hát tặng cho một con chim bị cột chặt". Tiểu sử J.Krishnamurti.
Hãy thức dậy, hãy sống lại, vì đã tới gần người thầy vĩ đại, hãy học hành. Con đường chông gai lắm, vượt qua nó giống như cạnh bén của một lưỡi dao cạo.
KATHA UPANISHAD III

Freedom From the Known Chapter 4

Freedom From the Known Chapter 4

We said in the last chapter that joy was something entirely different from pleasure, so let us find out what is involved in pleasure and whether it is at all possible to live in a world that does not contain pleasure but a tremendous sense of joy, of bliss.

We are all engaged in the pursuit of pleasure in some form or other - intellectual, sensuous or cultural pleasure, the pleasure of reforming, telling others what to do, of modifying the evils of society, of doing good - the pleasure of greater knowledge, greater physical satisfaction, greater experience, greater understanding of life, all the clever, cunning things of the mind - and the ultimate pleasure is, of course, to have God.

Pleasure is the structure of society. From childhood until death we are secretly, cunningly or obviously pursuing pleasure. So whatever our form of pleasure is, I think we should be very clear about it because it is going to guide and shape our lives. It is therefore important for each one of us to investigate closely, hesitantly and delicately this question of pleasure, for to find pleasure, and then nourish and sustain it, is a basic demand of life and without it existence becomes dull, stupid, lonely and meaningless.

You may ask why then should life not be guided by pleasure? For the very simple reason that pleasure must bring pain, frustration, sorrow and fear, and, out of fear, violence. If you want to live that way, live that way. Most of the world does, anyway, but if you want to be free from sorrow you must understand the whole structure of pleasure

To understand pleasure is not to deny it. We are not condemning it or saying it is right or wrong, but if we pursue it, let us do so with our eyes open, knowing that a mind that is all the time seeking pleasure must inevitably find its shadow, pain. They cannot be separated, although we run after pleasure and try to avoid pain.

Now, why is the mind always demanding pleasure? Why is it that we do noble and ignoble things with the undercurrent of pleasure? Why is it we sacrifice and suffer on the thin thread of pleasure? What is pleasure and how does it come into being? I wonder if any of you have asked yourself these questions and followed the answers to the very end?

Pleasure comes into being through four stages - perception, sensation, contact and desire. I see a beautiful motor car, say; then I get a sensation, a reaction, from looking at it; then I touch it or imagine touching it, and then there is the desire to own and show myself off in it. Or I see a lovely cloud, or a mountain clear against the sky, or a leaf that has just come in springtime, or a deep valley full of loveliness and splendour, or a glorious sunset, or a beautiful face, intelligent, alive, not self-conscious and therefore no longer beautiful. I look at these things with intense delight and as I observe them there is no observer but only sheer beauty like love. For a moment I am absent with all my problems, anxieties and miseries - there is only that marvellous thing. I can look at it with joy and the next moment forget it, or else the mind steps in, and then the problem begins; my mind thinks over what it has seen and thinks how beautiful it was; I tell myself I should like to see it again many times. Thought begins to compare, judge, and say `l must have it again tomorrow'. The continuity of an experience that has given delight for a second is sustained by thought.

It is the same with sexual desire or any other form of desire. There is nothing wrong with desire. To react is perfectly normal. If you stick a pin in me I shall react unless I am paralysed. But then thought steps in and chews over the delight and turns it into pleasure. Thought wants to repeat the experience, and the more you repeat, the more mechanical it becomes; the more you think about it, the more strength thought gives to pleasure. So thought creates and sustains pleasure through desire, and gives it continuity, and therefore the natural reaction of desire to any beautiful thing is perverted by thought. Thought turns it into a memory and memory is then nourished by thinking about it over and over again.

Of course, memory has a place at a certain level. In everyday life we could not function at all without it. In its own field it must be efficient but there is a state of mind where it has very little place. A mind which is not crippled by memory has real freedom.

Have you ever noticed that when you respond to something totally, with all your heart, there is very little memory? It is only when you do not respond to a challenge with your whole being that there is a conflict, a struggle, and this brings confusion and pleasure or pain. And the struggle breeds memory. That memory is added to all the time by other memories and it is those memories which respond. Anything that is the result of memory is old and therefore never free. There is no such thing as freedom of thought. It is sheer nonsense.

Thought is never new, for thought is the response of memory, experience, knowledge. Thought, because it is old, makes this thing which you have looked at with delight and felt tremendously for the moment, old. From the old you derive pleasure, never from the new. There is no time in the new.

So if you can look at all things without allowing pleasure to creep in - at a face, a bird, the colour of a sari, the beauty of a sheet of water shimmering in the sun, or anything that gives delight - if you can look at it without wanting the experience to be repeated, then there will be no pain, no fear, and therefore tremendous joy.

It is the struggle to repeat and perpetuate pleasure which turns it into pain. Watch it in yourself. The very demand for the repetition of pleasure brings about pain, because it is not the same, as it was yesterday. You struggle to achieve the same delight, not only to your aesthetic sense but the same inward quality of the mind, and you are hurt and disappointed because it is denied to you.

Have you observed what happens to you when you are denied a little pleasure? When you don't get what you want you become anxious, envious, hateful. Have you noticed when you have been denied the pleasure of drinking or smoking or sex or whatever it is - have you noticed what battles you go through? And all that is a form of fear, isn't it? You are afraid of not getting what you want or of losing what you have. When some particular faith or ideology which you have held for years is shaken or torn away from you by logic or life, aren't you afraid of standing alone? That belief has for years given you satisfaction and pleasure, and when it is taken away you are left stranded, empty, and the fear remains until you find another form of pleasure, another belief.

It seems to me so simple and because it is so simple we refuse to see its simplicity. We like to complicate everything. When your wife turns away from you, aren't you jealous? Aren't you angry? Don't you hate the man who has attracted her? And what is all that but fear of losing something which has given you a great deal of pleasure, a companionship, a certain quality of assurance and the satisfaction of possession?

So if you understand that where there is a search for pleasure there must be pain, live that way if you want to, but don't just slip into it. If you want to end pleasure, though, which is to end pain, you must be totally attentive to the whole structure of pleasure - not cut it out as monks and sannyasis do, never looking at a woman because they think it is a sin and thereby destroying the vitality of their understanding - but seeing the whole meaning and significance of pleasure. Then you will have tremendous joy in life. You cannot think about joy. Joy is an immediate thing and by thinking about it, you turn it into pleasure. Living in the present is the instant perception of beauty and the great delight in it without seeking pleasure from it.

Freedom From the Known

Freedom From the Known Chapter 4

với NGỌN LỬA của CHÚ Ý "ĐỐT CHÁY HOÀN TOÀN CẶN BÃ THỜI GIAN" thuộc VẬN HÀNH TÂM LÝ.

TỰ DO TỪ NHƯNG GÌ ĐÃ BIẾT ĐƯỢC

MỘT SỰ KIỆN HIỆN THỰC, MỘT THỰC TẾ HOÀN TOÀN KHÁC BIỆT VỚI TÂM TRÍ HÌNH DUNG-TƯỞNG TƯỢNG hay PHÓNG CHIẾU...NHẬN THỨC MỚI NGAY TRONG HIỆN TẠI vượt KHÔNG GIAN-THỜI GIAN....CHO CHÚNG TA CÁI NHÌN MỚI MẺ "TÂM TRÍ KHÔNG BỊ MẮC KẸT TRONG CHUYỂN ĐỘNG QUEN THUỘC của CÁI ĐÃ BIẾT hằng TRIỆU NĂM". SỨC MẠNH SÁNG TẠO tại TÂM THỨC là ÁNH SÁNG của NHẬN THỨC trong HIỆN TẠI. với NGỌN LỬA của CHÚ Ý "ĐỐT CHÁY HOÀN TOÀN CẶN BÃ THỜI GIAN" thuộc VẬN HÀNH TÂM LÝ.

KHỦNG HOẢNG-HỖN LOẠN vốn tại BẢN THÂN CHÚNG TA và THẾ GIỚI hiện nay.

CHÚ TÂM MANG TÂM TRÍ về THỰC TẠI....

NGHỆ THUẬT NGHE-NHÌN XẢY RA TRONG HIỆN TẠI... 

THIỀN là TRẬT TỰ GIẢI PHÓNG TÂM TRÍ THOÁT KHỎI sự KHỦNG HOẢNG-HỖN LOẠN vốn tại BẢN THÂN CHÚNG TA và THẾ GIỚI hiện nay.

Freedom From the Known Chapter 3

Freedom From the Known Chapter 3

When you become aware of your conditioning you will understand the whole of your consciousness. Consciousness is the total field in which thought functions and relationships exist. All motives, intentions, desires, pleasures, fear, inspiration, longings, hopes, sorrows, joys are in that field. But we have come to divide the consciousness into the active and the dormant, the upper and lower level - that is, all the daily thoughts, feelings and activities on the surface and below them the so-called subconscious, the things with which we are not familiar, which express themselves occasionally through certain intimations, intuitions and dreams.
We are occupied with one little corner of consciousness which is most of our life; the rest, which we call the subconscious, with all its motives, its fears, its racial and inherited qualities, we do not even know how to get into. Now I am asking you, is there such a thing as the subconscious at all? We use that word very freely. We have accepted that there is such a thing and all the phrases and jargon of the analysts and psychologists have seeped into the language; but is there such a thing? And why is it that we give such extraordinary importance to it? It seems to me that it is as trivial and stupid as the conscious mind - as narrow, bigoted, conditioned, anxious and tawdry.
So is it possible to be totally aware of the whole field of consciousness and not merely a part, a fragment, of it? If you are able to be aware of the totality, then you are functioning all the time with your total attention, not partial attention. This is important to understand because when you are being totally aware of the whole field of consciousness there no friction. it is only when you divide consciousness, which is all thought, feeling and action, into different levels that there is friction.
We live in fragments. You are one thing at the office, another at home; you talk about democracy and in your heart you are autocratic; you talk about loving your neighbours, yet kill him with competition; there is one part of you working, looking, independently of the other. Are you aware of this fragmentary existence in yourself? And is it possible for a brain that has broken up its own functioning, its own thinking, into fragments - is it possible for such a brain to be aware of the whole field? Is it possible to look at the whole of consciousness completely, totally, which means to be a total human being?
If, in order to try to understand the whole structure of the `me', the self, with all its extraordinary complexity, you go step by step, uncovering layer by layer, examining every thought, feeling and motive, you will get caught up in the analytical process which may take you weeks, months, years - and when you admit time into the process of understanding yourself, you must allow for every form of distortion because the self is a complex entity, moving, living, struggling, wanting, denying, with pressures and stresses and influences of all sorts continually at work on it. So you will discover for yourself that this is not the way; you will understand that the only way to look at yourself is totally, immediately, without time; and you can see the totality of yourself only when the mind is not fragmented. What you see in totality is the truth.
Now can you do that? Most of us cannot because most of us have never approached the problem so seriously, because we have never really looked at ourselves. Never. We blame others, we explain things away or we are frightened to look. But when you look totally you will give your whole attention, your whole being, everything of yourself, your eyes, your ears, your nerves; you will attend with complete self-abandonment, and then there is no room for fear, no room for contradiction, and therefore no conflict.
Attention is not the same thing as concentration. Concentration is exclusion; attention, which is total awareness, excludes nothing. It seems to me that most of us are not aware, not only of what we are talking about but of our environment, the colours around us, the people, the shape of the trees, the clouds, the movement of water. Perhaps it is because we are so concerned with ourselves, with our own petty little problems, our own ideas, our own pleasures, pursuits and ambitions that we are not objectively aware. And yet we talk a great deal about awareness. Once in India I was travelling in a car. There was a chauffeur driving and I was sitting beside him. There were three gentlemen behind discussing awareness very intently and asking me questions about awareness, and unfortunately at that moment the driver was looking somewhere else and he ran over a goat, and the three gentlemen were still discussing awareness - totally unaware that they had run over a goat. When the lack of attention was pointed out to those gentlemen who were trying to be aware it was a great surprise to them.
And with most of us it is the same. We are not aware of outward things or of inward things. If you want to understand the beauty of a bird, a fly, or a leaf, or a person with all his complexities, you have to give your whole attention which is awareness. And you can give your whole attention only when you care, which means that you really love to understand - then you give your whole heart and mind to find out.
Such awareness is like living with a snake in the room; you watch its every movement, you are very, very sensitive to the slightest sound it makes. Such a state of attention is total energy; in such awareness the totality of yourself is revealed in an instant.
When you have looked at yourself so deeply you can go much deeper. When we use the word `deeper' we are not being comparative. We think in comparisons - deep and shallow, happy and unhappy. We are always measuring, comparing. Now is there such a state as the shallow and the deep in oneself? When I say, `My mind is shallow, petty, narrow, limited', how do I know all these things? Because I have compared my mind with your mind which is brighter, has more capacity, is more intelligent and alert. Do I know my pettiness without comparison? When I am hungry, I do not compare that hunger with yesterday's hunger. Yesterday's hunger is an idea, a memory.
If I am all the time measuring myself against you, struggling to be like you, then I am denying what I am myself. Therefore I am creating an illusion. When I have understood that comparison in any form leads only to greater illusion and greater misery, just as when I analyse myself, add to my knowledge of myself bit by bit, or identify myself with something outside myself, whether it be the State, a saviour or an ideology - when I understand that all such processes lead only to greater conformity and therefore greater conflict - when I see all this I put it completely away. Then my mind is no longer seeking. It is very important to understand this. Then my mind is no longer groping, searching, questioning. This does not mean that my mind is satisfied with things as they are, but such a mind has no illusion. Such a mind can then move in a totally different dimension. The dimension in which we usually live, the life of every day which is pain, pleasure and fear, has conditioned the mind, limited the nature of the mind, and when that pain, pleasure and fear have gone (which does not mean that you no longer have joy: joy is something entirely different from pleasure) - then the mind functions in a different dimension in which there is no conflict, no sense of `otherness'.
Verbally we can go only so far: what lies beyond cannot be put into words because the word is not the thing. Up to now we can describe, explain, but no words or explanations can open the door. What will open the door is daily awareness and attention - awareness of how we speak, what we say, how we walk, what we think. It is like cleaning a room and keeping it in order. Keeping the room in order is important in one sense but totally unimportant in another. There must be order in the room but order will not open the door or the window. What will open the door is not your volition or desire. You cannot possibly invite the other. All that you can do is to keep the room in order, which is to be virtuous for itself, not for what it will bring. To be sane, rational, orderly. Then perhaps, if you are lucky, the window will open and the breeze will come in. Or it may not. It depends on the state of your mind. And that state of mind can be understood only by yourself, by watching it and never trying to shape it, never taking sides, never opposing, never agreeing, never justifying, never condemning, never judging - which means watching it without any choice. And out of this choiceless awareness perhaps the door will open and you will know what that dimension is in which there is no conflict and no time.
Freedom From the Known
Freedom From the Known Chapter 3

Thông Điệp Từ Những Giọt Nước | Khoa Học Huyền Bí

Freedom From the Known Chapter 1

Freedom From the Known

Freedom From the Known Chapter 1

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare - something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state - something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

Man has always asked the question: what is it all about? Has life any meaning at all? He sees the enormous confusion of life, the brutalities, the revolt, the wars, the endless divisions of religion, ideology and nationality, and with a sense of deep abiding frustration he asks, what is one to do, what is this thing we call living, is there anything beyond it?

And not finding this nameless thing of a thousand names which he has always sought, he has cultivated faith - faith in a saviour or an ideal - and faith invariably breeds violence.

In this constant battle which we call living, we try to set a code of conduct according to the society in which we are brought up, whether it be a Communist society or a so-called free society; we accept a standard of behaviour as part of our tradition as Hindus or Muslims or Christians or whatever we happen to be. We look to someone to tell us what is right or wrong behaviour, what is right or wrong thought, and in following this pattern our conduct and our thinking become mechanical, our responses automatic. We can observe this very easily in ourselves.

For centuries we have been spoon-fed by our teachers, by our authorities, by our books, our saints. We say, 'Tell me all about it - what lies beyond the hills and the mountains and the earth?' and we are satisfied with their descriptions, which means that we live on words and our life is shallow and empty. We are secondhand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves; nothing original, pristine, clear.

Throughout theological history we have been assured by religious leaders that if we perform certain rituals, repeat certain prayers or mantras, conform to certain patterns, suppress our desires, control our thoughts, sublimate our passions, limit our appetites and refrain from sexual indulgence, we shall, after sufficient torture of the mind and body, find something beyond this little life. And that is what millions of so-called religious people have done through the ages, either in isolation, going off into the desert or into the mountains or a cave or wandering from village to village with a begging bowl, or, in a group, joining a monastery, forcing their minds to conform to an established pattern. But a tortured mind, a broken mind, a mind which wants to escape from all turmoil, which has denied the outer world and been made dull through dis- cipline and conformity - such a mind, however long it seeks, will find only according to its own distortion.

So to discover whether there actually is or is not something beyond this anxious, guilty, fearful, competitive existence, it seems to me that one must have a completely different approach altogether. The traditional approach is from the periphery inwards, and through time, practice and renunciation, gradually to come upon that inner flower, that inner beauty and love - in fact to do everything to make oneself narrow, petty and shoddy; peel off little by little; take time; tomorrow will do, next life will do - and when at last one comes to the centre one finds there is nothing there, because one's mind has been made incapable, dull and insensitive.

Having observed this process, one asks oneself, is there not a different approach altogether - that is, is it not possible to explode from the centre?

The world accepts and follows the traditional approach. The primary cause of disorder in ourselves is the seeking of reality promised by another; we mechanically follow somebody who will assure us a comfortable spiritual life. It is a most extraordinary thing that although most of us are opposed to political tyranny and dictatorship, we inwardly accept the authority, the tyranny, of another to twist our minds and our way of life. So fl we completely reject, not intellectually but actually, all so-called spiritual authority, all ceremonies, rituals and dogmas, it means that we stand alone and are already in conflict with society; we cease to be respectable human beings. A respectable human being cannot possibly come near to that infinite, immeasurable, reality.

You have now started by denying something absolutely false - the traditional approach - but if you deny it as a reaction you will have created another pattern in which you will be trapped; if you tell yourself intellectually that this denial is a very good idea but do nothing about it, you cannot go any further. If you deny it however, because you understand the stupidity and immaturity of it, if you reject it with tremendous intelligence, because you are free and not frightened, you will create a great disturbance in yourself and around you but you will step out of the trap of respectability. Then you will find that you are no longer seeking. That is the first thing to learn - not to seek. When you seek you are really only window-shopping.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality, or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosophers or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself and that is why you must know yourself. Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self. To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom.

And what is yourself, the individual you? I think there is a difference between the human being and the individual. The individual is a local entity, living in a particular country, belonging to a particular culture, particular society, particular religion. The human being is not a local entity. He is everywhere. If the individual merely acts in a particular corner of the vast field of life, then his action is totally unrelated to the whole. So one has to bear in mind that we are talking of the whole not the part, because in the greater the lesser is, but in the lesser the greater is not. The individual is the little conditioned, miserable, frustrated entity, satisfied with his little gods and his little traditions, whereas a human being is concerned with the total welfare, the total misery and total confusion of the world.

We human beings are what we have been for millions of years - -colossally greedy, envious, aggressive, jealous, anxious and despairing, with occasional flashes of joy and affection. We are a strange mixture of hate, fear and gentleness; we are both violence and peace. There has been outward progress from the bullock cart to the jet plane but psychologically the individual has not changed at all, and the structure of society throughout the world has been created by individuals. The outward social structure is the result of the inward psychological structure of our human relationships, for the individual is the result of the total experience, knowledge and conduct of man. Each one of us is the storehouse of all the past. The individual is the human who is all mankind. The whole history of man is written in ourselves.

Do observe what is actually taking place within yourself and outside yourself in the competitive culture in which you live with its desire for power, position, prestige, name, success and all the rest of it - observe the achievements of which you are so proud, this whole field you call living in which there is conflict in every form of relationship, breeding hatred, antagonism, brutality and endless wars. This field, this life, is all we know, and being unable to understand the enormous battle of existence we are naturally afraid of it and find escape from it in all sorts of subtle ways. And we are frightened also of the unknown - frightened of death, frightened of what lies beyond tomorrow. So we are afraid of the known and afraid of the unknown. That is our daily life and in that there is no hope, and therefore every form of philosophy, every form of theo- logical concept, is merely an escape from the actual reality of what is.

All outward forms of change brought about by wars, revolutions, reformations, laws and ideologies have failed completely to change the basic nature of man and therefore of society. As human beings living in this monstrously ugly world, let us ask ourselves, can this society, based on competition, brutality and fear, come to an end? Not as an intellectual conception, not as a hope, but as an actual fact, so that the mind is made fresh, new and innocent and can bring about a different world altogether? It can only happen, I think, if each one of us recognises the central fact that we, as individuals, as human beings, in whatever part of the world we happen to live or whatever culture we happen to belong to, are totally responsible for the whole state of the world.

We are each one of us responsible for every war because of the aggressiveness of our own lives, because of our nationalism, our selfishness, our gods, our prejudices, our ideals, all of which divide us. And only when we realize, not intellectually but actually, as actually as we would recognise that we are hungry or in pain, that you and I are responsible for all this existing chaos, for all the misery throughout the entire world because we have contributed to it in our daily lives and are part of this monstrous society with its wars, divisions, its ugliness, brutality and greed - only then will we act.

But what can a human being do - what can you and I do - to create a completely different society? We are asking ourselves a very serious question. Is there anything to be done at all? What can we do? Will somebody tell us? People have told us. The so-called spiritual leaders, who are supposed to understand these things better than we do, have told us by trying to twist and mould us into a new pattern, and that hasn't led us very far; sophisticated and learned men have told us and that has led us no further. We have been told that all paths lead to truth - you have your path as a Hindu and someone else has his path as a Christian and another as a Muslim, and they all meet at the same door - which is, when you look at it, so obviously absurd. Truth has no path, and that is the beauty of truth, it is living. A dead thing has a path to it because it is static, but when you see that truth is something living, moving, which has no resting place, which is in no temple, mosque or church, which no religion, no teacher, no philosopher, nobody can lead you to - then you will also see that this living thing is what you actually are - your anger, your brutality, your violence, your despair, the agony and sorrow you live in. In the understanding of all this is the truth, and you can understand it only if you know how to look at those things in your life. And you cannot look through an ideology, through a screen of words, through hopes and fears.

So you see that you cannot depend upon anybody. There is no guide, no teacher, no authority. There is only you - your relationship with others and with the world - there is nothing else. When you realize this, it either brings great despair, from which comes cynicism and bitterness, or, in facing the fact that you and nobody else is responsible for the world and for yourself, for what you think, what you feel, how you act, all self-pity goes. Normally we thrive on blaming others, which is a form of self-pity.

Can you and I, then, bring about in ourselves without any outside influence, without any persuasion, without any fear of punishment - can we bring about in the very essence of our being a total revolution, a psychological mutation, so that we are no longer brutal, violent, competitive, anxious, fearful, greedy, envious and all the rest of the manifestations of our nature which have built up the rotten society in which we live our daily lives?

It is important to understand from the very beginning that I am not formulating any philosophy or any theological structure of ideas or theological concepts. It seems to me that all ideologies are utterly idiotic. What is important is not a philosophy of life but to observe what is actually taking place in our daily life, inwardly and outwardly. If you observe very closely what is taking place and examine it, you will see that it is based on an intellectual conception, and the intellect is not the whole field of existence; it is a fragment, and a fragment, however cleverly put together, however ancient and traditional, is still a small part of existence whereas we have to deal with the totality of life. And when we look at what is taking place in the world we begin to understand that there is no outer and inner process; there is only one unitary process, it is a whole, total movement, the inner movement expressing itself as the outer and the outer reacting again on the inner. To be able to look at this seems to me all that is needed, because if we know how to look, then the whole thing becomes very clear, and to look needs no philosophy, no teacher. Nobody need tell you how to look. You just look.

Can you then, seeing this whole picture, seeing it not verbally but actually, can you easily, spontaneously, transform yourself? That is the real issue. Is it possible to bring about a complete revolution in the psyche?

I wonder what your reaction is to such a question? You may say, 'I don't want to change', and most people don't, especially those who are fairly secure socially and economically or who hold dogmatic beliefs and are content to accept themselves and things as they are or in a slightly modified form. With those people we are not concerned. Or you may say more subtly, 'Well, it's too difficult, it's not for me', in which case you will have already blocked yourself, you will have ceased to enquire and it will be no use going any further. Or else you may say, 'I see the necessity for a fundamental inward change in myself but how am I to bring it about? Please show me the way, help me towards it.' If you say that, then what you are concerned with is not change itself; you are not really interested in a fundamental revolution: you are merely searching for a method, a system, to bring about change.

If I were foolish enough to give you a system and if you were foolish enough to follow it, you would merely be copying, imitating, conforming, accepting, and when you do that you have set up in yourself the authority of another and hence there is conflict between you and that authority. You feel you must do such and such a thing because you have been told to do it and yet you are incapable of doing it. You have your own particular inclinations, tendencies and pressures which conflict with the system you think you ought to follow and therefore there is a contradiction. So you will lead a double life between the ideology of the system and the actuality of your daily existence. In trying to conform to the ideology, you suppress yourself - whereas what is actually true is not the ideology but what you are. If you try to study yourself according to another you will always remain a secondhand human being.

A man who says, 'I want to change, tell me how to', seems very earnest, very serious, but he is not. He wants an authority whom he hopes will bring about order in himself. But can authority ever bring about inward order? Order imposed from without must always breed disorder. You may see the truth of this intellectually but can you actually apply it so that your mind no longer projects any authority, the authority of a book, a teacher, a wife or husband, a parent, a friend or of society? Because we have always functioned within the pattern of a formula, the formula becomes the ideology and the authority; but the moment you really see that the question, 'How can I change?' sets up a new authority, you have finished with authority for ever.

Let us state it again clearly: I see that I must change completely from the roots of my being; I can no longer depend on any tradition because tradition has brought about this colossal laziness, acceptance and obedience; I cannot possibly look to another to help me to change, not to any teacher, any God, any belief, any system, any outside pressure or influence. What then takes place?

First of all, can you reject all authority? If you can it means that you are no longer afraid. Then what happens? When you reject something false which you have been carrying about with you for generations, when you throw off a burden of any kind, what takes place? You have more energy, haven't you? You have more capacity, more drive, greater intensity and vitality. If you do not feel this, then you have not thrown off the burden, you have not discarded the dead weight of authority.

But when you have thrown it off and have this energy in which there is no fear at all - no fear of making a mistake, no fear of doing right or wrong - then is not that energy itself the mutation? We need a tremendous amount of energy and we dissipate it through fear but when there is this energy which comes from throwing off every form of fear, that energy itself produces the radical inward revolution. You do not have to do a thing about it.

So you are left with yourself, and that is the actual state for a man to be who is very serious about all this; and as you are no longer looking to anybody or anything for help, you are already free to discover. And when there is freedom, there is energy; and when there is freedom it can never do anything wrong. Freedom is entirely different from revolt. There is no such thing as doing right or wrong when there is freedom. You are free and from that centre you act. And hence there is no fear, and a mind that has no fear is capable of great love. And when there is love it can do what it will.

What we are now going to do, therefore, is to learn about ourselves, not according to me or to some analyst or philosopher - because if we learn about ourselves according to someone else, we learn about them, not ourselves - we are going to learn what we actually are.

Having realized that we can depend on no outside authority in bringing about a total revolution within the structure of our own psyche, there is the immensely greater difficulty of rejecting our own inward authority, the authority of our own particular little experiences and accumulated opinions, knowledge, ideas and ideals. You had an experience yesterday which taught you something and what it taught you becomes a new authority - and that authority of yesterday is as destructive as the authority of a thousand years. To understand ourselves needs no authority either of yesterday or of a thousand years because we are living things, always moving, flowing, never resting. When we look at ourselves with the dead authority of yesterday, we will fail to understand the living movement and the beauty and quality of that movement.

To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor.

So now we are going to investigate ourselves together - not one person explaining while you read, agreeing or disagreeing with him as you follow the words on the page, but taking a journey together, a journey of discovery into the most secret corners of our minds. And to take such a journey we must travel light; we cannot be burdened with opinions, prejudices and conclusions - all that old furniture we have collected for the last two thousand years and more. Forget all you know about yourself; forget all you have ever thought about yourself; we are going to start as if we knew nothing.

It rained last night heavily, and now the skies are beginning to clear; it is a new fresh day. Let us meet that fresh day as if it were the only day. Let us start on our journey together with all the remembrance of yesterday left behind - and begin to understand ourselves for the first time.

Freedom From the Known

Freedom From the Known Chapter 1