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Listening has importance only when one is not projecting one’s own desires through which one listens.
To listen there must be an inward quietness, a freedom from the strain of acquiring, a relaxed attention. This
is only when you listen without the idea, without thought, that you are directly in contact; and being in contact, you will understand whether what he is saying is true or false; you do not have to discuss.
Be simple … and don’t try to become something or to capture some experience.
If you are to discover for yourself what is the new, it is no good carrying the burden of the old, especially knowledge—the knowledge of another, however great.
But a man who is protecting himself constantly through knowledge is obviously not a truth-seeker….
By learning I do not mean the mere cultivation of memory or the accumulation of knowledge, but the capacity to think clearly and sanely without illusion, to start from facts and not from beliefs and ideals.
Learning is a continuous process, not a process of addition, not a process which you gather and then from there act.
Wisdom is something that has to be discovered by each one, and it is not the result of knowledge.
Wisdom comes when there is the maturity of self-knowing.
Humility cannot be cultivated, and a mind that has no humility is incapable of learning.
The problem then is: Is it possible for a mind that has been so conditioned—brought up in innumerable sects, religions, and all the superstitions, fears—to break away from itself and thereby bring about a new mind? …
An idea is not a fact, it is a fiction. God is a fiction; you may believe in it, but still it is a fiction. But to find God you must completely destroy the fiction, because the old mind is the mind that is frightened, is ambitious, is fearful of death, of living, and of relationship; and it is always, consciously or unconsciously, seeking a permanency, security.
If we can understand the compulsion behind our desire to dominate or to be dominated, then perhaps we can be free from the crippling effects of authority.
if we are to understand and transcend the desire for certainty, then we must have extensive awareness and insight, we must be free, not at the end, but at the beginning.
We listen with hope and fear; we seek the light of another but are not alertly passive to be able to understand. If the liberated seems to fulfill our desires we accept him; if not, we continue our search for the one who will; what most of us desire is gratification at different levels. What is important is not how to recognize one who is liberated but how to understand yourself. No authority here or hereafter can give you knowledge of yourself; without self-knowledge there is no liberation from ignorance, from sorrow.
see there can only be one state in which reality, newness, can come into being, which brings about a revolution. That state is when the mind is completely empty of the past, when there is no analyzer, no experience, no judgment, no authority of any kind.
Self-knowledge is obviously a process, not an end in itself; and to know oneself, one must be aware of oneself in action, which is relationship. You discover yourself, not in isolation, not in withdrawal, but in relationship—in relationship to society, to your wife, your husband, your brother, to man; but to discover how you react, what your responses are, requires an extraordinary alertness of mind, a keenness of perception.
One must know oneself as one is, not as one wishes to be, which is merely an ideal and therefore fictitious, unreal;
To know yourself, there must be the awareness, the alertness of mind in which there is freedom from all beliefs, from all idealization, because beliefs and ideals only give you a color, perverting true perception.
the understanding of what you are, without distortion, is the beginning of virtue. Virtue is essential, for it gives freedom.
Self-knowledge is the discovery from moment to moment of the ways of the self, its intentions and pursuit, its thoughts and appetites.
Authority prevents the understanding of oneself, does it not? Under the shelter of an authority, a guide, you may have temporarily a sense of security, a sense of well-being, but that is not the understanding of the total process of oneself. Authority in its very nature prevents the full awareness of oneself and therefore ultimately destroys freedom;
The self is a very complex process that can be uncovered only in relationship, in our daily activities, in the way we talk, the way we judge, calculate, the way we condemn others and ourselves.
It is only through awareness of what is true from moment to moment that there is discovery of the timeless, the eternal.
But if one begins to understand the “me” in all its various activities from day to day, then in that very understanding, without any effort, the nameless, the timeless comes into being. But the timeless is not a reward for self-knowledge.
It is only the simple mind that can understand the real, not the mind that is full of words, knowledge, information. The mind that analyzes, calculates, is not a simple mind.
Can you not just listen to this as the soil receives the seed and see if the mind is capable of being free, empty? It can be empty only by understanding all its own projections, its own activities, not off and on, but from day to day, from moment to moment. Then you will find the answer, then you will see that the change comes without your asking, that the state of creative emptiness is not a thing to be cultivated—it is there, it comes darkly, without any invitation, and only in that state is there a possibility of renewal, newness, revolution.
Right thinking comes with self-knowledge. Without understanding yourself, you have no basis for thought; without self-knowledge what you think is not true.
If you kill another, you are destroying yourself. You are the center of the whole, and without understanding yourself you cannot understand reality. We have an intellectual knowledge of this unity but we keep knowledge and feeling in different compartments and hence we never experience the extraordinary unity of man.
Self-knowledge comes into being when we are aware of ourselves in relationship, which shows what we are from moment to moment. Relationship is a mirror in which to see ourselves as we actually are. But most of us are incapable of looking at ourselves as we are in relationship, because we immediately begin to condemn or justify what we see.
yet this alone is the beginning of self-knowledge. If one is able to see oneself as one is in this extraordinary mirror of relationship, which does not distort, if one can just look into this mirror with full attention and see actually what is, be aware of it without condemnation, without judgment, without evaluation—and one does this when there is earnest interest—then one will find that the mind is capable of freeing itself from all conditioning; and it is only then that the mind is free to discover that which lies beyond the field of thought.
Life as we know it, our daily life, is a process of becoming.
However much I may try to become intelligent, my stupidity will remain.
Separation between God or reality and yourself is brought about by you, by the mind that clings to the known, to certainty, to security.
a great deal of watchfulness, alertness, watching ceaselessly, so that it does not slip away.
Without removing the causes of ignorance, there cannot be enlightenment; and to seek enlightenment when the mind is unenlightened is utterly empty, meaningless. Therefore, I must begin to see the false in my relationships with ideas, with people, with things.
But we demand a belief when we want to escape from a fact into an unreality.
So, your religion, your belief in God, is an escape from actuality, and therefore it is no religion at all.
religion is the understanding of the fact of what you are in your everyday relationships; religion is the manner of your speech, the way you talk, the way you address your servants, the way you treat your wife, your children, and neighbors.
A mind that escapes from the actual, from the facts of relationship, shall never find God;
But the mind that understands its relationship with property, with people, with ideas, the mind which no longer struggles with the problems which relationship creates, and for which the solution is not withdrawal but the understanding of love—such a mind alone can understand reality.
Belief is corruption because behind belief and morality lurks the mind, the self—the self growing big, powerful and strong.
But it is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief, because your very belief projects what you think ought to be God, what you think ought to be true.
To understand the confusion, belief is not necessary, and belief only acts as a screen between ourselves and our problems. So,
After all, a cup is useful only when it is empty; and a mind that is filled with beliefs, with dogmas, with assertions, with quotations, is really an uncreative mind; it is merely a repetitive mind.
Ideas are not truth; and truth is something that must be experienced directly, from moment to moment.
thought and therefore limit action? When action is compelled by an idea, action can never liberate man.
Love is not an idea; it is not a sensation; it is not a memory; it is not a feeling of postponement, a self-protective device.
when there is complete attention, that is, when the mind is totally aware, alert, watchful, there is no such thing as evil or good; there is only an awakened state.
