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How Is The Mind Which Functions On Knowledge How Is The Brain Which Is Recording All The Time To End, To See The Importance Of Recording And Not Let It Move In Any Other Direction? Very Simply: You Insult Me, You Hurt Me, By Word, Gesture, By An Actual Act; That Leaves A Mark On The Brain Which Is Memory. That Memory Is Knowledge, That Knowledge Is Going To Interfere In My Meeting You Next Time Obviously.

-Jiddu Krishnamurti

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How Is The Mind

Jiddu Krishnamurti

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How Is The Mind Which Functions On Knowledge How Is The Brain Which Is Recording All The Time To End, To See The Importance Of Recording And Not Let It Move In Any Other Direction? Very Simply: You Insult Me, You Hurt Me, By Word, Gesture, By An Actual Act; That Leaves A Mark On The Brain Which Is Memory. That Memory Is Knowledge, That Knowledge Is Going To Interfere In My Meeting You Next Time Obviously.

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Love Is The Most Practical Thing In The World. To Love, To Be Kind, Not To Be Greedy, Not To Be Ambitious, Not To Be Influenced By People But To Think For Yourself-these Are All Very Practical Things, And They Will Bring About A Practical, Happy Society.

In The Space Which Thought Creates Around Itself There Is No Love. This Space Divides Man From Man.

Its Beautiful To Be Alone. To Be Alone Does Not Mean To Be Lonely. It Means The Mind Is Not Influenced And Contaminated By Society.

There Is No Partial Sensitivity; Either It Is The State Of One's Whole Being, Total Consciousness Or It Is Not There At All

The Significance Of Life Is Living.

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Can't You Fall In Love And Not Have A Possessive Relationship? I Love Someone And She Loves Me And We Get Married - That Is All Perfectly Straightforward And Simple, In That There Is No Conflict At All.

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Thought Is Matter As Much As The Floor, The Wall, The Telephone, Are Matter.

In Our Relationship With Children And Young People, We Are Not Dealing With Mechanical Devices That Can Be Quickly Repaired, But With Living Beings Who Are Impressionable, Volatile, Sensitive, Afraid, Affectionate; And To Deal With Them We Have To Have Great Understanding, The Strength Of Patience And Love.

The Ending Of Sorrow Is The Beginning Of Wisdom. Knowledge Is Always Within The Shadow Of Ignorance. Meditation Is Freedom From Thought And A Movement In The Ecstasy Of Truth. Meditation Is Explosion Of Intelligence.

When We Stop Learning In Our Relationship, Whether We Are Studying, Playing Or Whatever We Are Doing, And Merely Act From The Knowledge We Have Accumulated, Then Disorder Comes.

Our Relationship

It Is Intelligence That Brings Order, Not Discipline.

It Is Utterly And Irrevocably Possible To Empty All Hurts And Therefore To Love, To Have Compassion. To Have Compassion Means To Have Passion For All Things, Not Just Between Two People, But For All Human Beings, For All Things Of The Earth, The Animals, The Trees - Everything The Earth Contains. When We Have Such Compassion We Will Not Despoil The Earth As We Are Doing Now And We Will Have No Wars.

What Has Validity Is Your Living, Not What Happens Tomorrow.

So Let Us Decide Whether You Want A Shelter, A Safety Zone, Which Will No Longer Yield Conflict, Whether You Want To Escape From The Present Conflict To Enter A Condition In Which There Shall Be No Conflict; Or Whether You Are Unaware, Unconscious Of This Conflict In Which You Exist. If You Are Unconscious Of The Conflict, That Is, The Battle That Is Taking Place Between That Self And The Environment, If You Are Unconscious Of That Battle, Then Why Do You Seek Further Remedies? Remain Unconscious.

The Earth Doesn't Belong To Anyone. It Is The Land Upon Which All Of Us Are To Live For Many Years, Ploughing, Reaping And Destroying. You Are Always A Guest On This Earth And Have The Austerity Of A Guest. Austerity Is Far Deeper Than Owning Only A Few Things. The Very Word Austerity Has Been Spoilt By The Monks, By The Sannyasis, By The Hermits. Sitting On That High Hill Alone In The Solitude Of Many Things, Many Rocks And Little Animals And Ants, That Word Has No Meaning.

You Yourself Are The Teacher, And The Pupil, You're The Master, You're The Guru, You Are The Leader, You Are Everything! And, To Understand Is To Transform What Is.

Freedom From The Desire For An Answer Is Essential To The Understanding Of A Problem.

Training The Intellect Does Not Result In Intelligence. Intelligence Comes Into Being When One Acts In Perfect Harmony, Both Intellectually And Emotionally.

To Understand What Is Right Meditation There Must Be An Awareness Of The Operation Of One's Own Consciousness, And Then There Is Complete Attention.

There Is An Art Of Seeing Things As They Are: Without Naming, Without Being Caught In A Network Of Words, Without Thinking Interfering With Perception.

Learning Implies A Mind That Doesn't Know.

Religion Becomes A Matter Of Belief, And Belief Acts As A Limitation On The Mind; And The Mind Then Is Never Free.

Learning In The True Sense Of The Word Is Possible Only In That State Of Attention, In Which There Is No Outer Or Inner Compulsion. Right Thinking Can Come About Only When The Mind Is Not Enslaved By Tradition And Memory.

What Is Of Great Importance Is That Everyone Should Concern Himself With What I Am Saying, Rather Than With The Personality Of The Teacher, The Body Of The Teacher, Where He Dwells, And So On. That Will Lead To Confusion.

Awareness Is Observation Without Choice, Condemnation, Or Justification. Awareness Is Silent Observation From Which There Arises Understanding Without The Experiencer And The Experienced. In This Awareness, Which Is Passive, The Problem Or The Cause Is Given An Opportunity To Unfold Itself And So Give Its Full Significance. In Awareness There Is No End In View To Be Gained, And There Is No Becoming, The 'me' And The 'mine' Not Being Given The Continuity.

To Know Oneself Is To Study Oneself In Action, Which Is Relationship.

Does A Human Being Know The Responsibility He Has To Himself And To All Of Mankind

To Me, Then, True Criticism Consists In Trying To Find Out The Intrinsic Worth Of The Thing Itself, And Not In Attributing A Quality To That Thing. You Attribute A Quality To An Environment, To An Experience, Only When You Want To Derive Something From It, When You Want To Gain Or To Have Power Or Happiness. Now This Destroys True Criticism. Your Desire Is Perverted Through Attributing Values, And Therefore You Cannot See Clearly. Instead Of Trying To See The Flower In Its Original And Entire Beauty, You Look At It Through Coloured Glasses, And Therefore You Can Never See It As It Is.

Life Behind All Form Is One, The Expressions Of That Life Are Not Of Very Great Importance.

Education In The True Sense Is Helping The Individual To Be Mature And Free, To Flower Greatly In Love And Goodness. That Is What We Should Be Interested In, And Not In Shaping The Child According To Some Idealistic Pattern.

After All, Without Understanding Yourself, What Basis Have You For Right Thinking?

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.

The Authority Of A Belief Imposed By Religion Surely Destroys The Discovery Of Reality.one Relies On Authority Because One Is Afraid To Stand Alone.

Without Discontentment, Without Revolt, You Can Never Attain Harmony. It Is A Necessary Stage, Which Must Be Gone Through By Everyone.

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.

Meditation Is The Process Of Understanding Your Own Mind.

Meditation, Then, Is A State Of Mind In Which The 'me' Is Absent. And Therefore That Very Absence Brings Order.

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Intuition Is The Only True Guide In Life.

Freedom And Love Go Together. Love Is Not A Reaction. If I Love You Because You Love Me, That Is Mere Trade, A Thing To Be Bought In The Market; It Is Not Love. To Love Is Not To Ask Anything In Return, Not Even To Feel That You Are Giving Something- And It Is Only Such Love That Can Know Freedom.

Discipline Does Not Mean Suppression And Control, Nor Is It Adjustment To A Pattern Or Ideology. It Means A Mind That Sees 'what Is' And Learns From 'what Was'.

Perception Without The Perceiver In Meditation Is To Commune With The Height And Depth Of The Immense. This Perception Is Entirely Different From Seeing An Object Without An Observer, Because In The Perception Of Meditation There Is No Object And Therefore No Experience. Can, However, Take Place When The Eyes Are Open And One Is Surrounded By Objects Of Every Kind. But Then These Objects Have No Importance At All. One Sees Them But There Is No Process Of Recognition, Which Means There Is No Experiencing.

Passion Is A Rather Frightening Thing Because If You Have Passion You Don't Know Where It Will Take You.

If You Lose Touch With Nature You Lose Touch With Humanity.

Knowledge, Idea, Belief Stands In The Way Of Wisdom.

Only When The Mind Is Tranquil-through Self-knowledge And Not Through Imposed Self-discipline-only Then, In That Tranquillity, In That Silence, Can Reality Come Into Being. It Is Only Then That There Can Be Bliss, That There Can Be Creative Action.

Control Exists Only When There Is Action Of Will, Positively Or Negatively. Will Is Resistance. When The Mind Is Learning, There Is No Resistance.

In Oneself Lies The Whole World And If You Know How To Look And Learn, The Door Is There And The Key Is In Your Hand. Nobody On Earth Can Give You Either The Key Or The Door To Open, Except Yourself.

Merely To Stuff The Child With A Lot Of Information, Making Him Pass Examinations, Is The Most Unintelligent Form Of Education.

Change In Society Is Of Secondary Importance; That Will Come About Naturally, Inevitably, When You As A Human Being Bring About The Change In Yourself.

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Does Choice Exist When I See Something Very Clearly?

Without Understanding The Process Of The Self, There Is No Bais For Thought, There Is No Basis For Right Thinking.

Until A Radical Change Takes Place And We Wipe Out All Nationalities, All Ideologies, All Religious Divisions, And Establish A Global Relationship - Psychologically First, Inwardly Before Organizing The Outer - We Shall Go On With Wars.

Truth Is Not A Matter Of Argumentation And Conviction; It Is Not The Outcome Of Opinion.

The Moment You Follow Someone You Cease To Follow Truth.

Freedom Is Not A Reaction; Freedom Is Not A Choice. . Freedom Is Found In The Choiceless Awareness Of Our Daily Existence And Activity.

There Is Hope In People, Not In Society, Not In Systems, But In You And Me.

Meditation Is The Movement Of Love. It Isn't The Love Of The One Or Of The Many. It Is Like Water That Anyone Can Drink Out Of Any Jar.

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.

You Must Understand The Whole Of Life, Not Just One Little Part Of It.

Look At That Battle You Are Involved In; You Are Caught In It: You Are It.

Teaching Is Not The Mere Imparting Of Information But The Cultivation Of An Inquiring Mind Which Will Penetrate Into The Question Of What Is Religion And Not Merely Accept The Established Religions, Churches, And Rituals.

Truth Does Not Belong To An Individual.

And As We Are - The World Is. That Is, If We Are Greedy, Envious, Competitive, Our Society Will Be Competitive, Envious, Greedy, Which Brings Misery And War. The State Is What We Are.

The Intellect Is Not The Means Of Creation, And Creation Does Not Take Place Through The Functioning Of The Intellect; On The Contrary, There Is Creation When The Intellect Is Silent.

You Can Look Only When The Mind Is Completely Quiet.

My Contention Is That It Is Impossible To Limit Truth, For That Would Mean That You Were Stepping Down The Truth To The Individual, Who Is Limited. It Would Be Useless To Lay Down A Crystallized Method For Everyone To Follow.

The Ending Is The Beginning, And The Beginning Is The First Step, And The First Step Is The Only Step.

If You Wish To Produce A Perfect Rose, You Must Cut Off The Other Buds Which Are Spoiling The Growth Of The Perfect Flower.

Space And Time Are Real For The Man Who Is Yet Imperfect, And Space Is Divided For Him Into Dimensions; Time, Into Past, Present, And Future.

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.

You Have Been Overcome; And Whether You Are Overcome By Envy Or By A So-called Noble Influence, You Are Still A Slave, You Are Not Free.

As The World Has To Attain The Fulfilment Of Eternal Life, To Me It Does Not In The Least Matter What I Am Called -'enlightened One', 'son Of God', Or Something Else. To Me, It Has No Purpose - As Little As When The Buddha Said, 'i Am The Enlightened One'.

In The Search For Reality, Energy Creates Its Own Discipline. But Mere Discipline, Without Full Comprehension Of All This, Has No Meaning, It Is A Most Destructive Thing.

Without Knowing Myself, I Have No Real Basis For Thinking.

To Understand The Totality Of This Extraordinary Thing Called Life, One Must Obviously Not Be Too Definite About These Things. One Cannot Be Definite With Something Which Is So Immense, Which Is Not Measurable By Words. We Cannot Understand The Immeasurable So Long As We Approach It Through Time.

Meditation Practice

Take A Journey Into The Things Which You Are Carrying, The Known- Not Into The Unknown-into What You Already Know: Your Pleasures, Your Delights, Your Despairs, Your Sorrows. Take A Journey Into That, That Is All You Have.

To Keep Always In The Same Place Means To Stagnate.

I Would Teach My Child To Respect What Is Right - The Word Right Is A Difficult Word To Use - I Would Teach Him To Respect The Intrinsic Value Of Things. Do You See What I Mean? The True Proportion Of Things.

Free Yourself From The Psychological Structure Of Society, Which Is To Free Yourself From The Essence Of Conflict.

You Would Never Hear Any Song Played Twice In The Same Way. The Words Were Retained, But Within A Certain Frame There Was Great Latitude, And The Musician Could Improvise To His Heart's Content; And The More The Variations And Combinations, The Greater The Musician.

Love May Be The Ultimate Solution To All Man's Difficulties, Problems And Travails.

Follow The Wandering, The Distraction, Find Out Why The Mind Has Wandered; Pursue It, Go Into It Fully. When The Distraction Is Completely Understood, Then That Particular Distraction Is Gone. When Another Comes, Pursue It Also.

If You Would Listen, Sir, In The Sense Of Being Aware Of Your Conflicts And Contradictions Without Forcing Them Into Any Particular Pattern Of Thought, Perhaps They Might Altogether Cease.

Understanding Of The Self Only Arises In Relationship, In Watching Yourself In Relationship To People, Ideas, And Things; To Trees, The Earth, And The World Around You And Within You. Relationship Is The Mirror In Which The Self Is Revealed. Without Self-knowledge There Is No Basis For Right Thought And Action.

Sentimentality And Emotionalism Have Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Love.

We All Place Ourselves At Various Levels, And We Are Constantly Falling From These Heights. It Is The Falls We Are Ashamed Of. Self-esteem Is The Cause Of Our Shame, Of Our Fall. It Is This Self-esteem That Must Be Understood, And Not The Fall.

Can I Live A Life, Daily Life, Without Sense Of Self-concern?

Put Away The Book, The Description, The Tradition, The Authority, And Take The Journey Of Self-discovery. Love, And Don't Be Caught In Opinions And Ideas About What Love Is Or Should Be. When You Love, Everything Will Come Right. Love Has Its Own Action.

Are You Trying To Grasp The Quality Of Intelligence, Compassion, The Immense Sense Of Beauty, The Perfume Of Love And That Truth Which Has No Path To It?

Introspection Is Self-improvement And Therefore Introspection Is Self-centeredness. Awareness Is Not Self-improvement. On The Contrary, It Is The Ending Of The Self, Of The “i,” With All Its Peculiar Idiosyncrasies, Memories, Demands, And Pursuits. In Introspection There Is Identification And Condemnation. In Awareness There Is No Condemnation Or Identification; Therefore, There Is No Self-improvement. There Is A Vast Difference Between The Two.

The Guru Cannot Awaken You; All That He Can Do Is To Point Out What Is.

I Am All For Changing, Even If Mistakes Are Made In The Process. Mistakes Do Not Matter.

You May Be Reborn A Thousand Times, But You Can Never Know The Real, For Only That Which Dies, That Which Comes To An End, Can Renew Itself.

Freedom From Something Is Not Freedom.

Why Is One A Slave To Thought ? Why Has Thought Become So Important In All Our Lives -thought Being Ideas, Being The Response To The Accumulated Memories In The Brain Cells? Perhaps Many Of You Have Not Even Asked Such A Question Before, Or If You Have You May Have Said, "it's Of Very Little Importance- What Is Important Is Emotion." But I Don't See How You Can Separate The Two. If Thought Does Not Give Continuity To Feeling, Feeling Dies Very Quickly. So Why In Our Daily Lives, In Our Grinding, Boring, Frightened Lives, Has Thought Taken On Such Inordinate Importance?

The Man Who Lives Without Conflict, Who Lives With Beauty And Love, Is Not Frightened Of Death Because To Love Is To Die.

Fear Is Nonacceptance Of What Is.

When We Talk About Understanding, Surely It Takes Place Only When The Mind Listens Completely - The Mind Being Your Heart, Your Nerves, Your Ears- When You Give Your Whole Attention To It.

The Creative Knows The Great Beginnings. The Receptive Completes The Finished Things. The Creative Is Decided And Therefore Shows To Men The Easy. The Receptive Is Yielding And Therefore Shows To Men The Simple. Learning Is Movement From Moment To Moment.

From Innumerable Complexities We Must Grow To Simplicity; We Must Become Simple In Our Inward Life And In Our Outward Needs.

Self-knowledge Is Only From Moment To Moment, And Therefore There Is A Creative Happiness From Moment To Moment.

When There Is Love, There Is No Duty. When You Love Your Wife, You Share Everything With Her-your Property, Your Trouble, Your Anxiety, Your Joy. You Do Not Dominate. You Are Not The Man And She Is Not The Woman To Be Used And Thrown Aside, A Sort Of Breeding Machine To Carry On Your Name. When There Is Love, The Word Duty Disappears.

Pain Itself Destroys Pain. Suffering Itself Frees Man From Suffering.

Your Belief In God Is Merely An Escape From Your Monotonous, Stupid And Cruel Life.

Put Away The Book, The Description, The Tradition, The Authority, And Take The Journey Of Self-discovery.

Learning Is The Very Essence Of Humility . . .

To Concentrate Implies Bringing All Your Energy To Focus On A Certain Point; But Thought Wanders Away... Whereas Attention Has No Control, No Concentration. It Is Complete Attention, Which Means Giving All Your Energy, The Energy Of The Brain, Your Heart, Everything, To Attending.

There Are Two Kinds Of Freedom: One Is The Freedom From Something, Which Is A Reaction; And The Other Is Not A Reaction, It Is "being Free."

The Mind Has To Be Empty To See Clearly.

It Does Not Matter What You Call The Gaoler So Long As He Has The Key That Will Open The Door Of Your Prison! Similarly, As I Have The Key To Release Life From Its Prison, It Does Not Matter In The Least What You Call Either The Key Or Myself. I Am Not Concerned About The Title.

The Beauty Of Meditation Is That You Never Know Where You Are, Where You Are Going, What The End Is.

In This Country, Unfortunately, As All Over The World, We Care So Little, We Have No Deep Feeling About Anything. Most Of Us Are Intellectual-intellectuals In The Superficial Sense Of Being Very Clever, Full Of Words And Theories About What Is Right And What Is Wrong, About How We Should Think, What We Should Do. Mentally We Are Highly Developed, But Inwardly There Is Very Little Substance Or Significance; And It Is This Inward Substance That Brings About True Action, Which Is Not Action According To An Idea.

You Haven't Changed. You May Say: 'i'm Full Of Love, I'm Full Of Truth, I'm Full Of Knowledge, I'm Full Of Wisdom.' I Say: 'that's All Nonsense. Do You Behave? Are You Free Of Fear? Are You Free Of Ambition, Greed, Envy And The Desire To Achieve Success In Every Field? If Not, You Are Just Playing A Game. You Are Not Serious.'

It Seems To Me That The Real Problem Is The Mind Itself And Not The Problem Which The Mind Has Created And Tries To Solve.

It Is Necessary For All Of Us To Awaken In Ourselves This Spirit Of Cooperation, For Then It Will Not Be A Mere Plan Or Agreement Which Causes Us To Work Together, But An Extraordinary Feeling Of Togetherness, The Sense Of Joy In Being And Doing Together Without Any Thought Of Reward Or Punishment.

So, To Meditate Is To Purge The Mind Of Its Self-centered Activity. And If You Have Come This Far In Meditation, You Will Find There Is Silence, A Total Emptiness. The Mind Is Uncontaminated By Society; It Is No Longer Subject To Any Influence, To The Pressure Of Any Desire. It Is Completely Alone, And Being Alone, Untouched It Is Innocent. Therefore There Is A Possibility For That Which Is Timeless, Eternal, To Come Into Being. This Whole Process Is Meditation.

Have You Ever Noticed A Tree Standing Naked Against The Sky, How Beautiful It Is? All Its Branches Are Outlined, And In Its Nakedness There Is A Poem, There Is A Song. Every Leaf Is Gone And It Is Waiting For The Spring. When The Spring Comes, It Again Fills The Tree With The Music Of Many Leaves, Which In Due Season Fall And Are Blown Away. And This Is The Way Of Life.

To Be Absolutely Nothing Is To Be Beyond Measure.

Absolutely Nothing

Meditation Is The Action Of Silence.

It Is Love Alone That Leads To Right Action. What Brings Order In The World Is To Love And Let Love Do What It Will.

From These Prejudices There Arises Conflict, Transient Joys And Suffering. But We Are Unconscious Of This, Unconscious That We Are Slaves To Certain Forms Of Tradition, To Social And Political Environment, To False Values.

The Crisis Is Not Out There In The World, It Is Within Our Own Consciousness.

Observe, And In That Observation There Is Neither The "observer" Nor The "observed" - There Is Only Observation Taking Place.

We Need Tremendous Energy To Bring About A Psychological Change In Ourselves As Human Beings, Because We Have Lived Far Too Long In A World Of Make-belief, In A World Of Brutality, Violence, Despair, Anxiety. To Live Humanly, Sanely, One Has To Change.

This Is No Magnificent Deed, Because I Do Not Want Followers, And I Mean This. The Moment You Follow Someone You Cease To Follow Truth. I Am Not Concerned Whether You Pay Attention To What I Say Or Not. I Want To Do A Certain Thing In The World And I Am Going To Do It With Unwavering Concentration. I Am Concerning Myself With Only One Essential Thing: To Set Man Free. I Desire To Free Him From All Cages, From All Fears, And Not To Found Religions, New Sects, Nor To Establish New Theories And New Philosophies.

Thought Is So Cunning, So Clever, That It Distorts Everything For Its Own Convenience.

Don't We Introduce Time As A Means Of Becoming More Evolved? The Brain Has Evolved But Is There Evolution Inwardly? Can The Brain Dominated By Time Not Be Subservient To It?

I Say That When You Have Perceived Or Attained The Goal, Compromises, Renunciations, Do Not Exist. If You Have Seen The Goal, Compromise Ceases To Exist. It Is Then A Question Of A Different Attitude.

The Following Of Authority Is The Denial Of Intelligence. [it] May Help Us Temporarily To Cover Up Our Difficulties And Problems; But To Avoid A Problem Is Only To Intensify It, And In The Process, Self-knowledge And Freedom Are Abandoned.

Transformation Can Only Take Place Immediately; The Revolution Is Now, Not Tomorrow.

Belief Conditions Experience, And Experience Then Strengthens Belief.

Imagination Builds The Image Of The Self, And Thought Then Functions Within Its Shadows. From This Self-concept Grows The Conflict Between What Is And What Should Be, The Conflict In Duality.

The Becoming Still Can Never Be The Being Still; Only With The Death Of Becoming Is There Being.

When Inquiry Is Suppressed By Previous Knowledge, Or By The Authority And Experience Of Another, Then Learning Becomes Mere Imitation, And Imitation Causes A Human Being To Repeat What Is Learned Without Experiencing It.

Beyond All Explanations Which A Good Brain Can Give, Why Do We Choose The Worse And Not The Better, Why Hate Rather Than Love, Why Greed And Not Generosity, Why Self-centred Activity And Not Open Total Action? Why Be Mean When There Are Soaring Mountains And Flashing Streams? Why Jealousy And Not Love? Why?

Fear Is The Process Of The Mind In The Struggle Of Becoming. In Becoming Good There Is The Fear Of Evil; In Becoming Complete, There Is The Fear Of Loneliness.

Happiness Is A State Of Which You Are Unconscious. The Moment You Are Aware That You Are Happy, You Cease To Be Happy.

The Primary Cause Of Disorder In Ourselves Is The Seeking Of Reality Promised By Another... 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.

Is Insight Dependent On A Material Process? Has Insight A Cause?

There Is Not First Understanding And Then Action. When You Understand, That Very Understanding Is Action.

We Choose Our Leaders, Political Or Spiritual, Out Of Our Own Confusion, And So They Also Are Confused.

You Must Know For Yourself, Directly, The Truth Of Yourself And You Cannot Realize It Through Another, However Great. There Is No Authority That Can Reveal It.

To Come Upon Love Without Seeking It Is The Only Way To Find It.

Knowledge Is An Addiction, As Drink; Knowledge Does Not Bring Understanding. Knowledge Can Be Taught, But Not Wisdom; There Must Be Freedom From Knowledge For The Coming Of Wisdom.

Understanding Knowledge

Do Not Repeat After Me Words That You Do Not Understand. Do Not Merely Put On A Mask Of My Ideas, For It Will Be An Illusion And You Will Thereby Deceive Yourself.

It Does Not In The Least Concern Me Whether I Shall Have At The End Of My Life Thirty People Who Understand Or Three Hundred. I Am Like An Artist Who Paints A Picture Because He Must, Otherwise He Is Unhappy - Not Unhappy, But He Must Obey That Creative Impulse.

Living In The Present Is The Instant Perception Of Beauty And The Great Delight In It Without Seeking Pleasure From It.

Perception Of Beauty

Right Education Should Help The Student, Not Only To Develop His Capacities, But To Understand His Own Highest Interest.

How Do You Listen? Do You Listen With Your Projections, Through Your Projection, Through Your Ambitions, Desire, Fears, Anxieties, Through Hearing Only What You Want To Hear, Only What Will Be Satisfactory, What Will Gratify, What Will Give Comfort, What Will For The Moment Alleviate Your Suffering? If You Listen Through The Screen Of Your Desires, Then You Obviously Listen To Your Own Voice.

Find Out What It Means To Die - Not Physically, That's Inevitable - But To Die To Everything That Is Known, To Die To Your Family, To Your Attachments, To All The Things That You Have Accumulated, The Known, The Known Pleasures, The Known Fears. Die To That Every Minute And You Will See What It Means To Die So That The Mind Is Made Fresh, Young, And Therefore Innocent, So That There Is Incarnation Not In A Next Life, But The Next Day.

A Lily Or A Rose Never Pretends, And Its Beauty Is That It Is What It Is.

It Is What It Is

I Do Not Think That You Can Try And Systematize Education For The Whole World. I Would Try Experiments In Small Communities And In Schools To See How They Work Out, Instead Of Taking The Children Of An Entire Nation And Trying To Bring Them Up On The Same System.

The Fact Is There Is Nothing That You Can Trust; And That Is A Terrible Fact, Whether You Like It Or Not. Psychologically There Is Nothing In The World, That You Can Put Your Faith, Your Trust, Or Your Belief In. Neither Your Gods, Nor Your Science Can Save You, Can Bring You Psychological Certainty; And You Have To Accept That You Can Trust In Absolutely Nothing.

It Is Good To Have Organizations But Not To Exaggerate Their Importance Out Of Due Proportion.

Why Does The Brain Retain The Memory Of The Hurt From Yesterday?

A Dialogue Is Very Important. It Is A Form Of Communication In Which Question And Answer Continue Till A Question Is Left Without An Answer. Thus The Question Is Suspended Between The Two Persons Involved In This Answer And Question. It Is Like A Bud With Untouched Blossoms . . . If The Question Is Left Totally Untouched By Thought, It Then Has Its Own Answer Because The Questioner And Answerer, As Persons, Have Disappeared. This Is A Form Of Dialogue In Which Investigation Reaches A Certain Point Of Intensity And Depth, Which Then Has A Quality That Thought Can Never Reach.

So When You Are Listening To Somebody, Completely, Attentively, Then You Are Listening Not Only To The Words, But Also To The Feeling Of What Is Being Conveyed, To The Whole Of It, Not Part Of It.

Am I Caught In A Self-centred, Narrow Little Cell Which Refuses To Look Beyond? Do I See It When You Come Along And Tell Me That My Brain Is The Brain Of All Mankind?

If You Begin To Understand What You Are Without Trying To Change It, Then What You Are Undergoes A Transformation.

Freedom Comes With Self-knowledge, When The Mind Goes Above And Beyond The Hindrances It Has Created For Itself.

Insight Is Not A Matter Of Memory, Of Knowledge And Time, Which Are All Thought.

What Brings Understanding Is Love. When Your Heart Is Full, Then You Will Listen To The Teacher, To The Beggar, To The Laughter Of Children, To The Rainbow, And To The Sorrow Of Man. Under Every Stone And Leaf, That Which Is Eternal Exists.

If People Who Say They Love Their Children Meant It, Would There Be War? And Would There Be Division Of Nationalities - Would There Be These Separations?

Despair Exists Only When There Is Hope.

Religion, It Seems To Me, Has Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Any Belief, With Any Priest, With Any Church Or So-called Sacred Book. The State Of The Religious Mind Can Be Understood Only When We Begin To Understand What Beauty Is; And The Understanding Of Beauty Must Be Approached Through Total Aloneness.

It Is Only In A Very Quiet Mind That Great Things Are Born; And A Quiet Mind Does Not Come About Through Effort, Through Control, Through Discipline.

If You Do Not Give Your Children Freedom, When They Grow Up, They Will Break Away From The Family, And Then Your Hearts Will Be Broken.

As We Are Concerned With What Others Think Of Us, So We Are Anxious To Know All About Them; And From This Arise The Crude And Subtle Forms Of Snobbishness And The Worship Of Authority. Thus We Become More And More Externalized And Inwardly Empty. The More Externalized We Are, The More Sensations And Distractions There Must Be, And This Gives Rise To A Mind That Is Never Quiet, That Is Not Capable Of Deep Search And Discovery.

Intuition Is The Whisper Of The Soul.

How Very Important It Is To Bring About In The Human Mind The Radical Revolution. The Crisis Is A Crisis In Consciousness, A Crisis That Cannot Anymore Accept The Old Norms, The Old Patterns, The Ancient Traditions. Considering What The World Is Now With All The Misery, Conflict, Destructive Brutality, Aggression And So On... Man Is Still As He Was, Is Still Brutal, Violent, Aggressive, Acquisitive, Competitive And Has Built A Society Along These Lines.

You Say You Love Your Wife. You Depend On Her; She Has Given You Her Body, Her Emotions, Her Encouragement, A Certain Feeling Of Security And Well-being. Then She Turns Away From You; She Gets Bored Or Goes Off With Someone Else, And Your Whole Emotional Balance Is Destroyed, And This Disturbance, Which You Don't Like, Is Called Jealousy. There Is Pain In It, Anxiety, Hate And Violence. So What You Are Really Saying Is, 'as Long As You Belong To Me I Love You But The Moment You Don't I Begin To Hate You.

You Only Learn When You Give Your Whole Being To Something. When You Give Your Whole Being To Mathematics,you Learn; But When You Are In A State Of Contradiction, When You Do Not Want To Learn But Are Forced To Learn, Then It Becomes Merely A Process Of Accumulation. To Learn Is Like Reading A Novel With Innumerable Characters; It Requires Your Full Attention, Not Contradictory Attention.

Why Haven't We, With All Our Cunning, Experience, Resolved This Problem Of Fear Completely? Isn't Fear The Cause Of The 'me'?

Is Not Virtue A Negation Of Becoming?

We Shall Quench Our Thirst, For We Shall Drink Deep At The Bubbling Fountain Of Wisdom.

When One Loses The Deep Intimate Relationship With Nature, Then Temples, Mosques And Churches Become Important.

Is There An Observation Which Is Not The Instrument Of Thought?

No Book Can Teach You About Yourself, No Psychologist, None Of The Professors Or Philosophers. What They Can Teach You Is What They Think You Are Or What They Think You Should Be.

Fear Is Not Of The Unknown, But Of Loss Of The Known.

When We Suffer We Have Made It Into A Personal Affair. We Shut Out All The Suffering Of Mankind.

War Is The Spectacular And Bloody Projection Of Our Everyday Living. We Precipitate War Out Of Our Daily Lives; And Without A Transformation In Ourselves, There Are Bound To Be National And Racial Antagonisms, The Childish Quarreling Over Ideologies, The Multiplication Of Soldiers, The Saluting Of Flags, And All The Many Brutalities That Go To Create Organized Murder.

The Mind Gives Meaning To Anything But The Meaning It Gives Is Meaningless.

We Want The Children To Conform; We Want To Control Their Minds, To Shape Their Conduct, Their Way Of Living, So That They Will Fit Into The Pattern Of Society, That Is What Every Parent Wants, Is It Not? And That Is Exactly What Is Happening, Whether It Be In America Or In Europe, In Russia Or In India. The Pattern May Vary Slightly, But They All Want The Child To Conform.

The Primary Cause Of Disorder In Ourselves Is The Seeking Of Reality Promised By Another.

Surely Education Has No Meaning Unless It Helps You Understand The Vast Experience Of Life With All Its Subtleties, With Its Extraordinary Beauty, Its Sorrows And Joys. You May Earn Degrees, You May Have A Series Of Letters After Your Name And Land A Good Job, But Then What? What Is The Point Of It All If In The Process Your Mind Becomes Dull, Weary, Stupid?

Extraordinary Beauty

A Consistent Thinker Is A Thoughtless Person, Because He Conforms To A Pattern; He Repeats Phrases And Thinks In A Groove.

True Understanding Is Possible Only When We Are Fully Conscious Of Our Thought, Not As An Operative Observer On This Thought, But Completely And Without The Intervention Of A Choice.

Religion Becomes A Matter Of Belief, And Belief Acts As A Limitation On The Mind; And The Mind Then Is Never Free. But It Is Only In Freedom That You Can Find Out What Is True, What Is God, Not Through Any Belief; Because Your Belief Projects What You Think God Ought To Be, What You Think Ought To Be True. If You Believe God Is Love, God Is Good, God Is This Or That, Your Very Belief Prevents You From Understanding What Is God, What Is True.

The Description Is Not The Described.

It Is Very Difficult To Be Like The Other Guy, To Be Ordinary. Mediocrity Takes A Great Deal Of Energy. But To Be Ourselves Is Very Easy. You Don't Have To Do A Thing.

Religion Is The Frozen Thought Of Man Out Of Which They Build Temples.

You Cannot Prevent A Man Getting Drunk If He Wishes To Do So, But When He Becomes A Nuisance, Then You Interfere.

There's A Great And Unutterable Beauty In All This.

Find Out For Yourself What Are The Possesions And Ideals That You Do Not Desire. By Knowing What You Do Not Want, By Elimination, You Will Unburden The Mind, And Only Then Will It Understand The Essential Which Is Ever There.

When The Mind Goes Beyond The Thought Of 'the Me,' The Experiencer, The Observer, The Thinker, Then There Is A Possibility Of A Happiness That Is Incorruptible.

Inspirational Life

Surely Love Has Nothing To Do With The Mind, It Is Not The Product Of The Mind; Love Is Entirely Independent Of Calculation, Of Thought.

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? To Come In Contact With The Tree You Have To Put Your Hand On It And The Word Will Not Help You To Touch It.

But The Healing Of The Mind Is Something Totally Different. That Healing Gradually Takes Place If You Are With Nature, With That Orange On The Tree, And The Blade Of Grass That Pushes Through The Cement, And The Hills Covered, Hidden, By The Clouds.

Is There A Thinker Apart From Thought?

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