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Control in any form…produces only conflict

Space and silence are necessary to go beyond the limitations of consciousness, but how can a mind which is so endlessly active in its self-interest be quiet? One can discipline it, control it, shape it, but such torture does not make the mind quiet; it merely makes it dull. Obviously the mere pursuit of the ideal of having a quiet mind is valueless because the more you force it the more narrow and stagnant it becomes. Control in any form, like suppression, produces only conflict.…

Freedom from the Known - 107

From the old you derive pleasure, never from the new

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.

There is no such thing as freedom of thought

From the old you derive pleasure, never from the new

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.

There is no such thing as freedom of thought

Attention…excludes nothing

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.

Are you aware that you are conditioned?

Are you aware that you are conditioned? That is the first thing to ask yourself, not how to be free of your conditioning. You may never be free of it, and if you say, ‘I must be free of it’, you may fall into another trap of another form of conditioning. So are you aware that you are conditioned? Do you know that even when you look at a tree and say, ‘That is an oak tree’, or ‘that is a banyan tree’, the naming of the tree, which is botanical knowledge, has so conditioned your mind that the word comes between you and actually seeing the tree?

Is it the very nature of the mind to be conditioned?

So, our problem is: How is the mind to be set free? And, is it possible to set the mind free—not in layers or patches, not in little bits here and there, but totally, right through, the unconscious as well as the conscious? Or, is the mind ever to be conditioned, ever to be shaped? You have to find out for yourself and not wait for me to tell you whether the mind can ever be free. Can the mind only think about freedom, as a prisoner does, and so is doomed never to be free but always to be held within the bondage of its conditioning?

Conditioning of self-improvement

The religions that we have do not help us to understand that which is the real because they are essentially based, not on the abandonment of the self, but on the improvement, the refinement of the self, which is the continuity of the self in different forms. It is only the very few who break away from society, not the outward trappings of society, but from all the implications of a society which is based on acquisitiveness, on envy, on comparison, competition.

Belief is not reality

Belief is not reality. You may believe in God, but your belief has no more reality than that of the man who does not believe in God. Your belief is the result of your background, of your religion, of your fears, and the nonbelief of the communist and others is equally the result of their conditioning. To find out what is true, the mind must be free from belief and nonbelief. I know you smile and agree, but you will still go on believing because it is so much more convenient, so much more respectable and safe.

A man who pursues virtue consciously is unvirtuous

I am only conscious of this activity of the ‘me’ when I am opposing, when consciousness is thwarted, when the ‘me’ is desirous of achieving a result. The ‘me’ is active, or I am conscious of that centre, when pleasure comes to an end and I want to have more of that pleasure; then there is resistance, and there is a purposive shaping of the mind to a particular end which will give me a delight, a satisfaction. I am aware of myself

If you listen completely, there is no listener

Listen to those crows. Do listen. If you listen completely, is there a centre from which you are listening?