The Interval Between Thoughts ( 30 may 2006)

Now, I say it is definitely possible for the mind to be free from allconditioning—not that you should accept my authority. If you accept it on authority,you will never discover, it will be another substitution and that will have nosignificance....The understanding of the whole process of conditioning does not come to you throughanalysis or introspection, because the moment you have the analyzer, that veryanalyzer himself is part of the background and therefore his analysis is of nosignificance.…How is it possible for the mind to be free? To be free, the mind must not only seeand understand its pendulum-like swing between the past and the future but also beaware of the interval between thoughts...If you watch very carefully, you will see that though the response, the movement ofthought, seems so swift, there are gaps, there are intervals between thoughts.Between two thoughts there is a period of silence that is not related to the thoughtprocess. If you observe you will see that that period of silence, that interval, isnot of time and the discovery of that interval, the full experiencing of thatinterval, liberates you from conditioning—or rather it does not liberate 'you' butthere is liberation from conditioning.... It is only when the mind is not givingcontinuity to thought, when it is still with a stillness that is not induced, thatis without any causation—it is only then that there can be freedom from thebackground.