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