The Unguarded Intellect ( 07 Sept 06 Thu)

The Unguarded Intellect
------------------------------------------------------------------
You can know yourself only when you are unaware, when you are not calculating, not
protecting, not constantly watching to guide, to transform, to subdue, to control;
when you see yourself unexpectedly, that is, when the mind has no preconceptions
with regard to itself, when the mind is open, unprepared to meet the unknown.

If your mind is prepared, surely you cannot know the unknown, for you are the
unknown. If you say to yourself, 'I am God,' or 'I am nothing but a mass of social
influences or a bundle of qualities' - if you have any preconception of yourself,
you cannot comprehend the unknown, that which is spontaneous.

So spontaneity can come only when the intellect is unguarded, when it is not
protecting itself, when it is no longer afraid for itself; and this can happen only
from within. That is, the spontaneous must be the new, the unknown, the
incalculable, the creative, that which must be expressed, loved, in which the will
as the process of intellect, controlling, directing, has no part. Observe your own
emotional states and you will see that the moments of great joy, great ecstasy, are
unpremeditated; they happen, mysteriously, darkly, unknowingly.

Book of Life - September 7th

Flash of Understanding ( 06 sept 06 wed)

The Flash of Understanding
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I do not know if you have noticed that there is understanding when the mind is very
quiet, even for a second; there is the flash of understanding when the verbalization
of thought is not. Just experiment with it and you will see for yourself that you
have the flash of understanding, that extraordinary rapidity of insight, when the
mind is very still, when thought is absent, when the mind is not burdened with its
own noise. So, the understanding of anything - of a modern picture, of a child, of
your wife, of your neighbor, or the understanding of truth, which is in all things -
can only come when the mind is very still. But such stillness cannot be cultivated
because if you cultivate a still mind, it is not a still mind, it is a dead mind.

The more you are interested in something, the more your intention to understand, the
more simple, clear, free the mind is. Then verbalization ceases. After all, thought
is word, and it is the word that interferes. It is the screen of words, which is
memory, that intervenes between the challenge and the response. It is the word that
is responding to the challenge, which we call intellection. So, the mind that is
chattering, that is verbalizing, cannot understand truth - truth in relationship,
not an abstract truth. There is no abstract truth. But truth is very subtle…. Like a
thief in the night, it comes darkly, not when you are prepared to receive it.

Book of Life - September 6th

Intellect Corrupts Feeling ( 04 sept 06 Mon)

Intellect Corrupts Feeling
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
You know, there is the intellect, and there is pure feeling - the pure feeling of
loving something, of having great, generous emotions. The intellect reasons,
calculates, weighs, balances. It asks, 'Is it worthwhile? Will it give me benefit?'
On the other hand, there is pure feeling - the extraordinary feeling for the sky,
for your neighbor, for your wife or husband, for your child, for the world, for the
beauty of a tree, and so on. When these two come together, there is death. Do you
understand? When pure feeling is corrupted by the intellect, there is mediocrity.
That is what most of us are doing. Our lives are mediocre because we are always
calculating, asking ourselves whether it is worthwhile, what profit we will get, not
only in the world of money, but also in the so-called spiritual world - 'If I do
this, will I get that?'

Book of Life - September 4th

Unity of Mind and Heart ( 03 sept 06 sun)

Unity of Mind and Heart
-------------------------------------------------------------

Training the intellect does not result in intelligence. Rather, intelligence comes
into being when one acts in perfect harmony, both intellectually and emotionally.
There is a vast distinction between intellect and intelligence. Intellect is merely
thought functioning independently of emotion. When intellect, irrespective of
emotion, is trained in any particular direction, one may have great intellect, but
one does not have intelligence, because in intelligence there is the inherent
capacity to feel as well as to reason; in intelligence both capacities are equally
present, intensely and harmoniously.

Now modern education is developing the intellect, offering more and more
explanations of life, more and more theories, without the harmonious quality of
affection. Therefore we have developed cunning minds to escape from conflict; hence
we are satisfied with explanations that scientists and philosophers give us. The
mind - the intellect - is satisfied with these innumerable explanations, but
intelligence is not, for to understand there must be complete unity of mind and
heart in action.

Book of Life - September 3rd
_______________________________________________

All thought is distraction ( 02 Sept 06 Sat)

All Thought Is Distraction
----------------------------------------------------------

A mind that is competitive, held in the conflict of becoming, thinking in terms of
comparison, is not capable of discovering the real. Thought-feeling which is
intensely aware is in the process of constant self-discovery - which discovery,
being true, is liberating and creative. Such self-discovery brings about freedom
from acquisitiveness and from the complex life of the intellect. It is this complex
life of the intellect that finds gratification in addictions: destructive curiosity,
speculation, mere knowledge, capacity, gossip and so on; and these hindrances
prevent simplicity of life. An addiction, a specialization gives sharpness to the
mind, a means of focusing thought, but it is not the flowering of thought-feeling
into reality.

The freedom from distraction is more difficult as we do not fully understand the
process of thinking-feeling which in itself has become the means of distraction.
Being ever incomplete, capable of speculative curiosity and formulation, it has the
power to create its own hindrances, illusions, which prevent the awareness of the
real. So it becomes its own distraction, its own enemy. As the mind is capable of
creating illusion, this power must be understood before it can be wholly free from
its own self-created distractions. Mind must be utterly still, silent, for all
thought becomes a distraction.

Book of Life - September 2nd

Keep discontent alive ( 30 Aug 2006 Wed)

Keep discontent alive
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is not discontent essential in our life, to any question, to any inquiry, to
probing, to finding out what is the real, what is Truth, what is essential in life?
I may have this flaming discontent in college; and then I get a good job and this
discontent vanishes. I am satisfied, I struggle to maintain my family, I have to
earn a livelihood and so my discontent is calmed, destroyed, and I become a mediocre
entity satisfied with things of life, and I am not discontent. But the flame has to
be maintained from the beginning to the end, so that there is true inquiry, true
probing into the problem of what discontent is. Because the mind seeks very easily a
drug to make it content with virtues, with qualities, with ideas, with actions, it
establishes a routine and gets caught up in it. We are quite familiar with that, but
our problem is not how to calm discontent, but how to keep it smoldering, alive,
vital. All our religious books, all our gurus, all political systems pacify the mi
nd, quieten the mind, influence the mind to subside, to put aside discontent and
wallow in some form of contentment.…Is it not essential to be discontented in order
to find what is true?

Book of Life - August 30th

Effort is a distraction ( 28 Aug 2006)

Effort is distraction from what is
---------------------------------------------------------

We must understand the problem of striving. If we can understand the significance of
effort, then we can translate it into action in our daily life. Does not effort mean
a struggle to change what is into what it is not, or what it should be, or what it
should become? We are constantly escaping from what is, to transform or modify it.
He who is truly content is he who understands what is, who gives the right
significance to what is . True contentment lies not in few or many possessions, but
in understanding the whole significance of what is. Only in passive awareness is the
meaning of what is understood. I am not, at the moment, talking of the physical
struggle with the earth, with construction or a technical problem, but of
psychological striving. The psychological struggles and problems always overshadow
the physiological. You may build a careful social structure, but as long as the
psychological darkness and strife are not understood, they invariably overturn the
carefully built structure.

Effort is distraction from what is. In the acceptance of what is, striving ceases.
There is no acceptance when there is the desire to transform or modify what is.
Striving, an indication of destruction, must exist so long as there is a desire to
change what is.

Book of Life - August 28th

Discontent has no answer ( 27 Aug 206)

Discontent has no answer

What is it that we are discontented with? Surely with what is. The what is may be
the social order, the what is may be the relationship, the what is may be what we
are, the thing we are essentially - which is, the ugly, the wandering thoughts, the
ambitions, the frustrations, the innumerable fears; that is what we are. In going
away from that, we think we shall find an answer to our discontent. So we are always
seeking a way, a means to change the what is - that is what our mind is concerned
with. If I am discontent and if I want to find a way, the means to contentment, my
mind is occupied with the means, the way and the practicing of the way in order to
arrive at contentment. So I am no longer concerned with discontent, with the embers,
the flame that is burning, which we call discontent. We do not find out what is
behind that discontent. We are only concerned with going away from that flame, from
that burning anxiety.

…This is enormously difficult because our mind is never satisfied, never content in
the examination of what is. It always wants to transform what is into something else
- which is the process of condemnation, justification or comparison. If you observe
your own mind you will see that when it comes face to face with what is, then it
condemns, then it compares it with 'what it should be', or it justifies it and so
on, and thereby pushes away what is, setting aside the thing which is causing the
disturbance, the pain, the anxiety.

Book of Life - August 27th

Observing thought ( 25 Aug 2006)

Observing thought

I must love the very thing I am studying. If you want to understand a child, you
must love and not condemn him. You must play with him, watch his movements, his
idiosyncrasies, his ways of behavior; but if you merely condemn, resist or blame
him, there is no comprehension of the child. Similarly, to understand what is, one
must observe what one thinks, feels and does from moment to moment. That is the
actual.

Book of Life - August 25th

Freedom from what is ( 24 Aug 2006)

Freedom from what is

Being virtuous comes through the understanding of what is, whereas becoming virtuous
is postponement, the covering up of what is with what you would like to be.
Therefore in becoming virtuous you are avoiding action directly upon what is. This
process of avoiding what is through the cultivation of the ideal is considered
virtuous; but if you look at it closely and directly you will see that it is nothing
of the kind. It is merely a postponement of coming face to face with what is. Virtue
is not the becoming of what is not; virtue is the understanding of what is and
therefore the freedom from what is. Virtue is essential in a society that is rapidly
disintegrating.

Book of Life - August 24th

U & nothingsness are one ! ( 21 Nov 2006)

You and nothingness are one

You are nothing. You may have your name and title, your property and bank account,
you may have power and be famous; but in spite of all these safeguards, you are as
nothing. You may be totally unaware of this emptiness, this nothingness, or you may
simply not want to be aware of it; but it is there, do what you will to avoid it.
You may try to escape from it in devious ways, through personal or collective
violence, through individual or collective worship, through knowledge or amusement;
but whether you are asleep or awake, it is always there. You can come upon your
relationship to this nothingness and its fear only by being choicelessly aware of
the escapes. You are not related to it as a separate, individual entity; you are not
the observer watching it; without you, the thinker, the observer, it is not. You and
nothingness are one; you and nothingness are a joint phenomenon, not two separate
processes. If you, the thinker, are afraid of it and approach it as something cont
rary and opposed to you, then any action you may take towards it must inevitably
lead to illusion and so to further conflict and misery. When there is the
discovery, the experiencing of that nothingness as you, then fear - which exists
only when the thinker is separate from his thoughts and so tries to establish a
relationship with them - completely drops away.

Book of Life - August 13th
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Action Based on Idea

Can action ever bring about freedom from this chain of cause-effect? I have done
something in the past; I have had experience, which obviously conditions my response
today; and today's response conditions tomorrow. That is the whole process of karma,
cause and effect; and obviously, though it may temporarily give pleasure, such a
process of cause and effect ultimately leads to pain. That is the real crux of the
matter: Can thought be free? Thought or action that is free does not produce pain,
does not bring about conditioning. That is the vital point of this whole question.
So, can there be action unrelated to the past? Can there be action not based on
idea? Idea is the continuation of yesterday in a modified form, and that
continuation will condition tomorrow, which means action based on idea can never be
free. As long as action is based on idea, it will inevitably produce further
conflict. Can there be action unrelated to the past? Can there be action without the
burden of
experience, the knowledge of yesterday? As long as action is the outcome of the
past, action can never be free, and only in freedom can you discover what is true.
What happens is that, as the mind is not free, it cannot act; it can only react,
and reaction is the basis of our action. Our action is not action but merely the
continuation of reaction because it is the outcome of memory, of experience, of
yesterday's response. So, the question is, can the mind be free from its
conditioning?

The Book of Life - November 21

The True REvolutionary ( 06 Aug 2006)

The true revolutionary
---------------------------------
Truth is not for those who are respectable, nor for those who desire self-extension,
self-fulfillment. Truth is not for those who are seeking security, permanency; for
the permanency they seek is merely the opposite of impermanency. Being caught in the
net of time, they seek that which is permanent, but the permanent they seek is not
the real because what they seek is the product of their thought. Therefore, a man
who would discover reality must cease to seek - which does not mean that he must be
contented with what is. On the contrary, a man who is intent upon the discovery of
truth must be inwardly a complete revolutionary. He cannot belong to any class, to
any nation, to any group or ideology, to any organized religion; for truth is not in
the temple or the church, truth is not to be found in the things made by the hand or
by the mind. Truth comes into being only when the things of the mind and of the hand
are put aside, and that putting aside of the things of the mind and
of the hand is not a matter of time. Truth comes to him who is free of time, who
is not using time as a means of self-extension. Time means memory of yesterday,
memory of your family, of your race, of your particular character, of the
accumulation of your experience which makes up the 'me' and the 'mine'.

Book of Life - August 6th
_______________________________

Active but Quiet ( 20 Oct 2006 )

Active but Quiet

To discover the new mind, not only is it necessary for us to understand the
responses of the old brain, it is also necessary for the old brain to be quiet. The
old brain must be active but quiet. You are following what I am saying? Look, sir!
If you would discover for yourself firsthand - not what somebody else says - if
there is a reality, if there is such a thing as God - the word 'God' is not the fact
- your old brain, which has been nurtured in a tradition, either anti-God or
pro-God, in a culture, in an environmental influence and propaganda, through
centuries of social assertion, must be quiet. Because otherwise it will only project
its own images, its own concepts, its own values. But those values, those concepts,
those beliefs are the result of what you have been told, or are the result of your
reactions to what you have been told; so, unconsciously, you say, This is my
experience!

So you have to question the very validity of experience - your own experience or of
the experience of anybody else; it does not matter who it is. Then by questioning,
enquiring, asking, demanding, looking, listening attentively, the reactions of the
old brain become quiet. But the brain is not asleep; it is very active, but it is
quiet. It has come to that quietness through observation, through investigation. And
to investigate, to observe, you must have light; and the light is your constant
alertness.

The Book of Life - October 20

Choiceless Awareness ( 10 Oct 2006 )

This Choiceless Awareness

Great seers have always told us to acquire experience. They have said that
experience gives us understanding. But it is only the innocent mind, the mind
unclouded by experience, totally free from the past - it is only such a mind that
can perceive what is reality. If you see the truth of that, if you perceive it for a
split second, you will know the extraordinary clarity of a mind that is innocent.
This means the falling away of all the encrustations of memory, which is the
discarding of the past. But to perceive it, there can be no question of 'how'. Your
mind must not be distracted by the 'how', by the desire for an answer. Such a mind
is not an attentive mind. As I said earlier in this talk, in the beginning is the
end. In the beginning is the seed of the ending of that which we call sorrow. The
ending of sorrow is realized in sorrow itself, not away from sorrow. To move away
from sorrow is merely to find an answer, a conclusion, an escape; but sorrow
continues. Whereas, i
f you give it your complete attention, which is to be attentive with your whole
being, then you will see that there is an immediate perception in which no time is
involved, in which there is no effort, no conflict; and it is this immediate
perception, this choiceless awareness that puts an end to sorrow.

The Book of Life - October 10

Love is NOT Pleasure ( 22 Nov 2006)

Love Is Not Pleasure

Without the understanding of pleasure you will never be able to understand love.
Love is not pleasure. Love is something entirely different. And to understand
pleasure, as I said, you have to learn about it. Now for most of us, for every human
being, sex is a problem. Why? Listen to this very carefully. Because you are not
able to solve it, you run away from it. The sannyasi runs away from it by taking a
vow of celibacy, by denying. Please see what happens to such a mind. By denying
something which is a part of your whole structure - the glands and so on - by
suppressing it, you have made yourself arid, and there is a constant battle going on
within yourself.

As we were saying, we have only two ways of meeting any problem, apparently: either
suppressing it or running away from it. Suppressing it is really the same thing as
running away from it. And we have a whole network of escapes - very intricate,
intellectual, emotional - and ordinary everyday activity. There are various forms of
escapes into which we will not go for the moment. But we have this problem. The
sannyasi escapes from it in one way, but he has not resolved it; he has suppressed
it by taking a vow, and the whole problem is boiling in him. He may put on the
outward robe of simplicity, but this becomes an extraordinary issue for him too, as
it is for the man who lives an ordinary life. How do you solve that problem?

The Book of Life - November 22

Religious Mind is Explosive ( 09 Dec 2006)

The Religious Mind Is Explosive

Can we discover for ourselves what is the religious mind? The scientist in his
laboratory is really a scientist; he is not persuaded by his nationalism, by his
fears, by his vanities, ambitions, and local demands; there, he is merely
investigating. But outside the laboratory, he is like anybody else with his
prejudices, with his ambitions, with his nationality, with his vanities, with his
jealousies, and all the rest of it. Such a mind cannot approach the religious mind.
The religious mind does not function from a center of authority, whether it is
accumulated knowledge as tradition, or it is experience - which is really the
continuation of tradition, the continuation of conditioning. The religious spirit
does not think in terms of time, the immediate results, the immediate reformation
within the pattern of society. …We said the religious mind is not a ritualistic
mind; it does not belong to any church, to any group, to any pattern of thinking.
The religious mind is the mind
that has entered into the unknown, and you cannot come to the unknown except by
jumping; you cannot carefully calculate and enter the unknown. The religious mind
is the real revolutionary mind, and the revolutionary mind is not a reaction to
what has been. The religious mind is really explosive, creative - not in the
accepted sense of the word creative, as in a poem, decoration, or building, as in
architecture, music, poetry, and all the rest of it - it is in a state of creation.

The Book of Life - December 9

Generosity of Mind ( 30 dec 2006)

Generosity of the Heart Is the Beginning of Meditation
----------------------------------------------------------
We are going to talk about something that needs a mind that can penetrate very
profoundly. We must begin very near because we cannot go very far if we do not know
how to begin very close, if we do not know how to take the first step. The flowering
of meditation is goodness, and the generosity of the heart is the beginning of
meditation. We have talked about many things concerning life, authority, ambition,
fear, greed, envy, death, time; we have talked about many things. If you observe, if
you have gone into it, if you have listened rightly, those are all the foundation
for a mind that is capable of meditating. You cannot meditate if you are ambitious -
you may play with the idea of meditation. If your mind is authority-ridden, bound by
tradition, accepting, following, you will never know what it is to meditate on this
extraordinary beauty....

It is the pursuit of its own fulfillment through time that prevents generosity. And
you need a generous mind - not only a wide mind, a mind that is full of space, but
also a heart that gives without thought, without a motive, and that does not seek
any reward in return. But to give whatever little one has or however much one has -
that quality of spontaneity of outgoing, without any restriction, without any
withholding, is necessary. There can be no meditation without generosity, without
goodness - which is to be free from pride, never to climb the ladder of success,
never to know what it is to be famous; which is to die to whatever has been
achieved, every minute of the day. It is only in such fertile ground that goodness
can grow, can flower. And meditation is the flowering of goodness.

The Book of Life - December 30
_______________________________________________

Die Every Day ( 10 Nov 2006 Fri)

Die Every Day

What is age? Is it the number of years you have lived? That is part of age; you were
born in such and such a year, and now you are fifteen, forty or sixty years old.
Your body grows old - and so does your mind when it is burdened with all the
experiences, miseries and weariness of life; and such a mind can never discover what
is truth. The mind can discover only when it is young, fresh, innocent; but
innocence is not a matter of age. It is not only the child that is innocent - he may
not be - but the mind that is capable of experiencing without accumulating the
residue of experience. The mind must experience, that is inevitable. It must respond
to everything - to the river, to the diseased animal, to the dead body being carried
away to be burnt, to the poor villagers carrying their burdens along the road, to
the tortures and miseries of life - otherwise it is already dead; but it must be
capable of responding without being held by the experience. It is tradition, the
accumulation of experience, the ashes of memory, that make the mind old. The mind
that dies every day to the memories of yesterday, to all the joys and sorrows of the
past - such a mind is fresh, innocent, it has no age; and without that innocence,
whether you are ten or sixty, you will not find God.

The Book of Life - November 10

" In Death is Immortality ( 16 Nov 2006)

In Death Is Immortality

Surely, in ending there is renewal, is there not? It's only in death that a new
thing comes into being. I am not giving you comfort. This is not something to be
believed or thought about or intellectually examined and accepted, for then you will
make it into another comfort, as you now believe in reincarnation or continuity in
the hereafter, and so on. But the actual fact is that that which continues has no
rebirth, no renewal. Therefore, in dying every day there is renewal, there is a
rebirth. That is immortality. In death there is immortality - not the death of which
you are afraid, but the death of previous conclusions, memories, experiences, with
which you are identified as the “me.” In the dying of the “me” every minute
there is eternity, there is immortality, there is a thing to be experienced - not to
be speculated upon or lectured about, as you do about reincarnation and all that
kind of stuff....

When you are no longer afraid, because every minute there is an ending and therefore
a renewal, then you are open to the unknown. Reality is the unknown. Death is also
the unknown. But to call death beautiful, to say how marvelous it is because we
shall continue in the hereafter and all that nonsense, has no reality. What has
reality is seeing death as it is - an ending; an ending in which there is renewal, a
rebirth, not a continuity. For that which continues decays; and that which has the
power to renew itself is eternal.

The Book of Life - November 16

I am Afraid ( 13 Nov 2006)

I Am Afraid

My inquiry now is how to be free from the fear of the known, which is the fear of
losing my family, my reputation, my character, my bank account, my appetites and so
on. You may say that fear arises from conscience; but your conscience is formed by
your conditioning, so conscience is still the result of the known. What do I know?
Knowledge is having ideas, having opinions about things, having a sense of
continuity as in relation to the known, and no more....

There is fear of pain. Physical pain is a nervous response, but psychological pain
arises when I hold on to things that give me satisfaction, for then I am afraid of
anyone or anything that may take them away from me. The psychological accumulations
prevent psychological pain as long as they are undisturbed; that is, I am a bundle
of accumulations, experiences, which prevent any serious form of disturbance - and I
do not want to be disturbed. Therefore, I am afraid of anyone who disturbs them.
Thus my fear is of the known, I am afraid of the accumulations, physical or
psychological, that I have gathered as a means of warding off pain or preventing
sorrow.... Knowledge also helps to prevent pain. As medical knowledge helps to
prevent physical pain, so beliefs help to prevent psychological pain, and that is
why I am afraid of losing my beliefs, though I have no perfect knowledge or concrete
proof of the reality of such beliefs.

The Book of Life - November 13

Feel the state of death ( 11 nov 2006)

Feel the State of Death

We are afraid to die. To end the fear of death we must come into contact with death,
not with the image which thought has created about death, but we must actually feel
the state. Otherwise there is no end to fear, because the word death creates fear,
and we don't even want to talk about it. Being healthy, normal, with the capacity to
reason clearly, to think objectively, to observe, is it possible for us to come into
contact with the fact, totally? The organism, through usage, through disease, will
eventually die. If we are healthy, we want to find out what death means. It's not a
morbid desire, because perhaps by dying we shall understand living. Living, as it is
now, is torture, endless turmoil, a contradiction, and therefore there is conflict,
misery and confusion. The everyday going to the office, the repetition of pleasure
with its pains, the anxiety, the groping, the uncertainty - that's what we call
living. We have become accustomed to that kind of living. We accept it; we grow old
with it and die.

To find out what living is as well as to find out what dying is, one must come into
contact with death; that is, one must end every day everything one has known. One
must end the image that one has built up about oneself, about one's family, about
one's relationship, the image that one has built through pleasure, through one's
relationship to society, everything. That is what is going to take place when death
occurs.

The Book of Life - November 11

15 Nov 2006 " to die without argument"

To Die without argument



Do you know what it means to come into contact with death, to die without argument?
Because death, when it comes, does not argue with you. To meet it, you have to die
every day to everything: to your agony, to your loneliness, to the relationship you
cling to; you have to die to your thought, to die to your habit, to die to your wife
so that you can look at your wife anew; you have to die to your society so that you,
as a human being, are new, fresh, young, and you can look at it. But you cannot meet
death if you don't die every day. It is only when you die that there is love. A mind
that is frightened has no love - it has habits, it has sympathy, it can force itself
to be kind and superficially considerate. But fear breeds sorrow, and sorrow is time
as thought.

So to end sorrow is to come into contact with death while living, by dying to your
name, to your house, to your property, to your cause, so that you are fresh, young,
clear, and you can see things as they are without any distortion. That is what is
going to take place when you die. But we have a limited death to the physical. We
know very well logically, sanely, that the organism is going to come to an end. So
we invent a life which we have lived of daily agony, daily insensitivity, the
increase of problems, and its stupidity; that life we want to carry over, which we
call the "soul" - which we say is the most sacred thing, a part of the divine, but
it is still part of your thought and therefore it has nothing to do with divinity.
It is your life!

So one has to live every day dying - dying because you are then in contact with life.

23 dec 06 meditation

Meditation

I am going step-by-step into what is meditation. Please don't wait till the end, hoping to have a complete description of how to meditate. What we are doing now is part of meditation.

Now, what one has to do is to be aware of the thinker, and not try to resolve the
contradiction and bring about an integration between thought and the thinker. The
thinker is the psychological entity who has accumulated experience as knowledge; he
is the time-bound center that is the result of ever-changing environmental
influence, and from this center he looks, he listens, he experiences. As long as one
does not understand the structure and the anatomy of this center, there must always
be conflict, and a mind in conflict cannot possibly understand the depth and the
beauty of meditation.

In meditation there can be no thinker, which means that thought must come to an end
- the thought that is urged forward by the desire to achieve a result. Meditation
has nothing to do with achieving a result. It is not a matter of breathing in a
particular way, or looking at your nose, or awakening the power to perform certain
tricks, or any of the rest of that immature nonsense. ...Meditation is not something
apart from life. When you are driving a car or sitting in a bus, when you are
chatting aimlessly, when you are walking by yourself in a wood or watching a
butterfly being carried along by the wind - to be choicelessly aware of all that is
part of meditation.

The Book of Life - December 23

24 dec 06 ; know the content of your thought

Know the Whole Content of One Thought

Not being anything is the beginning of freedom. So if you are capable of feeling, of
going into this you will find, as you become aware, that you are not free, that you
are bound to very many different things, and that at the same time the mind hopes to
be free. And you can see that the two are contradictory. So the mind has to
investigate why it clings to anything. All this implies hard work. It is much more
arduous than going to an office, than any physical labour, than all the sciences put
together. Because the humble, intelligent mind is concerned with itself without
being self-centered; therefore it has to be extraordinarily alert, aware, and that
means real hard work every day, every hour, every minute. ...This demands insistent
work because freedom does not come easily. Everything impedes - your wife, your
husband, your son, your neighbor, your Gods, your religions, your tradition. All
these impede you, but you have created them because you want security. And the mind
that is seeking security can never find it. If you have watched a little in the
world, you know there is no such thing as security. The wife dies, the husband
dies, the son runs away - something happens. Life is not static, though we would
like to make it so. No relationship is static because all life is movement. That is
a thing to be grasped, the truth to be seen, felt, not something to be argued
about. Then you will see, as you begin to investigate, that it is really a process
of meditation.

But do not be mesmerized by that word. To be aware of every thought, to know from
what source it springs and what is its intention - that is meditation. And to know
the whole content of one thought reveals the whole process of the mind.

The Book of Life - December 24