Public Talk 1, Bombay, 12 February 1950

12.2.1950

6.5 to 7.35 p.m.

Is it not important to find out how to listen? I hope you will hear properly. It seems to me that most of us do not listen at all. We listen through various screens of prejudices, either examining as a Hindu or a Muslim or a Christian or with a minority made out. You do not listen freely, easily and silently. We listen with an intention to understand or to disregard or listen with argumentation. We do not listen to find out and it seems to me, it is very important to know how to listen. It is important to know how to read, to see and to observe. For most of us are incapable of listening truly because it is only through right listening and hearing that we understand; understanding comes not through effort, not through any form of conformity or compulsion. We understand only when the mind is very quiet. There is no strain, no effort, but an easy flow, but an easy delight in trying to find out what the other man is saying. But we cannot find out what the other man is saying if we listen with any kind of prejudices, and perhaps I may have something new to say and so it will be more difficult for those who are prejudiced, in favour or against, to really understand, because most of us, because of our conditioning of our social, economic influences, religious and so on, we are so conditioned, we are copiests, we imitate and therefore knowing that it is new we disregard, call it revolutionary or absurd and put it aside. But if you can examine, if we can look at it with freedom, freedom from all prejudices, freedom from all limitations, then perhaps it is possible to understand and to commune with each other. There is communion only when there is no barrier, and an idea and a prejudice is a barrier. When you love somebody you commune, you have no idea about that person whom you love. Similarly, if you can establish a relationship between yourself and myself of real communion so that you and I understand the problem together, then there is a possibility of a radical revolution in the world, and the world does need not mere reformation, not a mere superficial revolution, but a fundamental, radical revolution, and revolution is not based on an idea. A revolution that is merely the outcome of an idea is not a fundamental transformation, but merely a continuance of a modified idea of modified pattern. So if we can, during these talks, establish between the speaker and the listener, a communion that is beyond mere words — because words are necessary to communicating — but if we merely remain on that level, surely, there is no understanding — understanding comes when we go beyond the verbal stage but the mind, that most of which words, is highly cultivated, you can only understand through the screen of words or it is capable of examining through this screen of words and such examination is obviously not understanding. That only leads to further disputation and argumentation. So is it not possible for us to really establish a communion not merely on the verbal level, but at deeper level, more worthwhile level, and that is only possible when you and I can look at our problems, which is living, which is relationship which is this strife between man and man, between groups of people, if you can understand these problems, approach them anew and examine them afresh then there is surely a possibility of bringing about a fundamental change in our life and therefore in the life of society. Our problem, is it not, the first basic problem, one of relationship and that relationship is based on the morality of the past or of the future, the traditional or what ought to be or what should be. Our morality, upon which our action is based, is the outcome of the past or the traditional or future and the ideal — and when we base our action on the future or in the past, obviously there is no action at all. As long as we live by hope we cannot act, because obviously hope is the response of a future demand and as long as we base our action on a hope and an utopia, a scheme, that ought to be the ideal, the perfection, obviously we are not living and an idea is always of the future or of the past, so when relationship is considered in terms of future or past action — naturally no action is possible, action being immediate, always in the present, in the now and one of our enormous problems is to bring about, is it not, a fundamental revolution in the present existing order. Seeing the disproportion, the mal-distribution, the whole economic structure of rich and poor, the capitalism and communism and so on and so on. We try to solve the present economic and social problems through a scheme, through an idea, through a pattern, you have the pattern of left or of the right, a system, the system of the left or a system of the right, and these systems are invariably based on an idea. So the left start out to resolve the problem by having a new system which invariably creates the possession, and so what is the result, that systems are in conflict with each other, the left system with the right system, and therefore there is no solution as long as we are in conflict of ideas which is basically of systems. To put it differently, there is the problem of starvation of unemployment, of wars, and we approach it with a certain definite system, how to resolve the problem, can any system resolve the problem, whether of the left or of the right. The system of the left is based on what they consider the perfect system, the final, absolute system and so is to the right, both of them approach the problem of starvation, unemployment and wars, with a prejudice, with an idea, with a system and so the result, the systems are in conflict, ideas, beliefs are in conflict with each other, and the problems remain, if you and I would start resolving a problem we must examine the problem not with prejudices or with the screen of a system, and it is only when the mind is free from this system, the left or the right, is it possible for us to face the problem, and is it possible for an action without idea, that is really the basic question. The idea is obviously hope, of the future or of the past, and can we live without hope? Obviously to live without hope implies the understanding of the present not in the terms of the past or future, but of the present, and if you look into our own minds and the base of our thought, you will see thinking in terms of the ideal of the future the hope “I will be something,” “a new state,” “will be.” Hope, always leads to death, in hope there is no life. Life is naturally in the present, not in the future. Life is not in the past, but in the process of living, in the “now.” So is it not possible to examine all our problems, whatever they may be, economical, individual or collective, to look at the problems not with the pattern of the future, with hope or with the prejudice of the past, with the conditioning; surely, every challenge is new, otherwise it is not a challenge, and to meet that challenge our mind must be fresh, anew, not burdened with the past or with the hope of the future, and is it possible for the mind to meet a problem without the conditioning of the past or the escape of the future, the hope of the future? Surely, it is possible only when you and I, as individuals, are capable of understanding the problem, whatever it be, personal or collective or societal or social, whatever it be, if we can look at it and respond to challenge adequately, fully, completely; and one can respond to the challenge adequately, naturally, when the mind is not burdened, with knowledge, with experience, which which means really, actually does it not mean when the mind is capable of being very quiet, surely we understand something, don’t we, when you are not struggling, when you do not put forward an idea, when the mind is very quiet, understanding comes. I do not know if you have noticed it in your own daily lives, when you are worrying, agitating, surely you do not understand the thing, but when the mind is very quiet, free from the past or the future, then it is capable of meeting the challenge and knowing the challenge adequately; it is the inadequacy that the response to the challenge creates the problem and our response to the challenge must be inadequate as long as our actions are based on either the past or the future, either on hope or tradition. Therefore, a man who would really understand the problem of existence and therefore bring about a radical revolution, must be free from the past and the future, from hope and from tradition, from the ideal and from “what has been.” Therefore such a state of mind is the creative mind, and it is only the creative mind that can understand the present problems, not the mind that is riddled that ideas, setting schemes and bothers, not a mind that is merely copying, imitating, because the challenge is new and if we want to understand, we must meet it anew.

So a reality or what name you would like to give it. It is a state of “being.” The mind is presenting and understanding that is moment to moment. When the mind is no longer swinging between the past and the future, the past and the future is not “what is.” The “what is” is unrelated to the past and the future, and that is the new and to meet that the mind itself must not be got in the swing of the past and the future; the mind must not be a passage of movement of the past and the future. So, the understanding of “what is” is reality, and reality is not of time, and a mind that is the product of time cannot understand reality. So the mind must be utterly still, not made still, not compelled, disciplined, controlled, but it is still when it understands this whole process, this movement of time free of the past, through the present to the future. Several questions have been sent in and before I answer them, may I suggest that you and I together are going to find the right answer. It is very easy to ask a question and wait for an answer. That is merely a school-boy trick, but it requires some matured mind and intelligent mind and exploring mind that can take the journey of discovering, which means a mind that is free and capable. So, in answering the questions, we both of us are going to take the journey together and find the right, the truth, not an answer to suit you or me. Truth surely is not “opinion.” Truth is not dependent on knowledge; where there is knowledge truth is not. Truth is not the result of experience. Experience is memory and merely to form the memory is to deny truth. But to discover truth the mind must be free, swift and free. Therefore, there must be that art of listening, hearing, so that through hearing you see it without effort, because effort is obviously mere “desire” and where there is “desire” there is conflict and conflict is never creative. So, in answering these questions please do not wait for an answer, because there is no answer, love has not got an answer — “yes” or “no.” It is much too vast, immeasurable and to fathom the immeasurable the mind must be free, silent, and to discover the right answer, the truth of the question is our quest, not the search for opinion, conclusion of omissions and denials. You and I , may I suggest, are going to see if we cannot discover the truth of the problem and, therefore, what truth alone, free from the problem and not your and my opinion, however wise, however erudite the man of knowledge will never find truth. Nor the man of opinion, nor the man of experience; the man must be very simple to find the truth and simplicity is not combined by learning.

QUESTION: Our lives are empty of any real impulse, of kindness; we seek to fill this void with organised charity and compulsive justice. Sex is our life. Can you throw any light on this weary subject?

ANSWER: The problem is, is it not, to translate the question, that our lives are empty, and we know no love; we know sensations, we know advertising, we know sexual demands, but there is no love, and how is this emptiness to be transformed, how is one to find that flame without the smoke. Surely, that is the question, is it not? So, let us find out the truth of the matter together. Why are our lives empty? Though we are very active, though we write books, go to cinemas, play, love, go to offices, yet our life is empty, daily boring, routine. Why our relationships so tawdry, empty, without much significance. Don’t we know our own lives sufficiently; we are aware that however it exists, such has very little meaning, we repeat like gramophones, phrases, phrases, quotations, ideas which we have learnt, what so and so has said, the Mahatma, the latest saints and the former saints. We are just gramophone records repeating and we have been calling this repetition “knowledge.” We know all this. If it is not religious, it is a political saint which either Marx, Angle or Christ. We repeat, we know this, and we also know what our lives are, utterly tawdry, boring and ugly. Why? Why is it like that? If you and I really ask that question to ourselves, put that question to ourselves, don’t we know the answer? Why is it that we have given so much significance to things of the mind? Why has the mind become so important in our lives, mind being ideas, thought, the capacity to raise it, to weigh, to balance, calculate. Why have we given such extraordinary significance to the mind, which does not mean that we must become sentimental, gushy and emotional. We know this emptiness. We know this extraordinary sense of frustration, and why is there in our life this vast shallowness; this sense of negation, shallowness, we can understand when we approach it through understanding our relationship, is it not? What is actually taking place in our relationships? Are not our relationships a self-isolation? Is not every activity of the mind a process of safeguard, seeking security, isolating; is not the very process of thinking that we pretend it to be collective, a process of isolation? Is not every action of our life a self-entrusting process? It is what you yourself can see it in your daily life, can’t you? The family has become a self-isolating process, has it not? Being isolated, it must exist in opposition. So all our actions are leading to self-isolation, which is this vast emptiness, and being empty then we proceed to fill it with radios, with noise, with chatter, with gossip, with reading, acquisition of knowledge, respectability, money, social position and so on and so on and so on. All isolating process, therefore, giving strength to isolation. So life is a process of isolation for most of us. Living is denial for most of us. The resistance, a conformity to a pattern and naturally the outcome of that is that sense of emptiness, a sense of frustration, and naturally in that process there is no life. Surely, to love someone is to be in communion with that person, not on one particular level, but completely, integrally, profusely, but we do not know such love. We know love as sensation — my children, my wife, my property, my knowledge, my achievement — which again is an isolating process, is it not? Our life in all directions is a way of extrusion, our life is the process of self-intrusive momentum of thought and feeling, and we have communion occasionally; that is why there is an enormous problem, then it is a different matter. Now that is the actual state of our lives. Respectability clothing emptiness, and the question I want to know is, how to go beyond it? How to go beyond the “lonely,” how to go beyond that emptiness, that insufficiency, that inner poverty? I do not think most of us want to — most of us are satisfied as we are — it is too tiresome to find out a new thing, much better remain as we are, and that is the real difficulty with most of us. We have built so many securities, walls around ourselves with which we are satisfied; occasionally there is a whisper beyond the wall, occasionally there is an earthquake, a revolution, a disturbance which we soon smother, so most of us really do not want to go beyond that, all that we are seeking is a different form of substitution, we all are not satisfied with us, we want a new thing that will satisfy us, a new safety, a new way of protecting ourselves, which is again the process of isolation; actually we are seeking not to go beyond isolation, but to strengthen isolation, which will be permanent and not to be disturbed. It is only the very few that want to go beyond, to see what is beyond this thing that we call the emptiness, loneliness. Most of us, as I said, most of us are satisfied with finding a substitution for the old. Those, of course, will be satisfied in this, discovering something that will be satisfactory, security, but there are some who will obviously want to go beyond that. Now let us proceed with those.

It means really one has to understand the whole process of the mind, must not one? Because what is this thing that we call the loneliness, emptiness; how do we know it is empty, how do we know it is lonely; by what measure do you say it is “this” and not “that?” You understand the problem? When you say it is lonely, it is empty, what is the measure? How do you know it is empty? You can only know it in the measurement of the old. You say it is empty and you give it a name and you think you have understood it. The naming of the thing, is that not itself a hindrance to the understanding of it? Look, Sirs, most of us know what this loneliness is, don’t we, from which we are trying to escape? This inward poverty, this inner insufficiency, most of us are aware of it. It is not an abortive reaction, it is a fact; by calling it some name, you cannot dissolve it, it is there. Now how do we know its content, how do you know the nature of it? Do you know something by giving it a name? Do you know me by calling me a name? You know me only when you can examine me. When you can look at me, when you can have communion with me; but by calling me by name, is this or that, obviously puts a communion with me. Similarly, to know the nature of that thing which we call the “lonely,” there must be communion, and the communion is not possible if you name it. So, to understand something, the naming must cease first. So if you understand your child, if you want to understand your child at all, which I doubt, (laughter), what do you do? Don’t you look at him, observe him, don’t you watch him in his play, when he is loving, study him? In other words, you love the thing, don’t you? It is natural when you love something, that we can commune; love is not word, a name, a thought. Similarly, it is only when we love that thing there can be communion with it, and love is not a word, a name. You cannot love it because you are not aware of it. You approach it with fear — not fear of “that,” but of something else! You have not thought of loneliness, because you do not know what it is. Sir, don’t smile, it is not a clever argumentation; experience when we are talking the thing, then you will see the significance of it. So that thing which we call the empty is a process of isolation, which is the product of everyday relationship; in that relationship we are seeking the exclusion, the extrusive. You want to be exclusive owner of your property, of your wife, of your children, or husband; you want to name it as the “mine,” which means exclusive acquisition obviously. So this process of exclusion must inevitably lead to that sense of isolation and as nothing could live in isolation there is conflict, and from that conflict we are trying to escape. Therefore, every form that we can possibly conceive, from social activity, from drink to God, from Puja, ceremonials to dance, they are all on the same level; they are all escapes, and when you see this total process in daily life, and if you would go beyond it then we must understand this relationship and watch it in “then” existence, and when the mind is not escaping in any form, then only is it possible in direct communion with that thing which we call “loneliness,” the “alone,” and to have communion with that thing there must be affection, there must be love, in other words, you must love the thing to understand it. So love is the only revolution, not in theory, not in idea, according to any book, or according to any pattern of social activity. So the problem is not to be found by further isolation of theories. It is to be found only when the mind, which is thought, is not trying to find a solution for this loneliness. That process is a process of isolation. The truth of the matter is that there can be communion only when there is love, and it is that only that can resolve the problem of this “loneliness.”

QUESTION: India has an ancient tradition of simple living and few wants. At present millions are held already in the grip of involuntary poverty and privation, and at the other end this land is dominated by a European mode of life, and the upper classes are already living in the Western classes of rich. How can one discover the extreme relationship to positions and to comforts?

ANSWER: Sir, what do you mean by simplicity? Is that not important to first find out what is simplicity of life? Having a few clothes is a simple life, couple of loin cloths? Having a few needs, is that simple life? Being satisfied with one meal, is that simple life? The outward show of simplicity, is that simple? Or must simplicity begin at quite a different end, not merely at the periphery, but at the centre. So, let us find out what we mean by simplicity. A mind that is complex, struggling, begging virtues, seeking power, trying to be “something,” trying to become non-violent, the ideal, the discipline in conforming, aiming, forces, is such a mind simple? Obviously not. But we want the outward show of simplicity. Because that is very profitable. That is the traditional or what should be the ideal; a mind that brushes the ideal is not a simple mind. It is an escaping mind. A mind in conflict is not a simple mind, a mind that is conforming to a pattern, whatever it be, is not a simple mind. So, where there is the simplicity, at the centre, at the periphery, there will be simplicity, and the questioner wants to know what is the right relationship to positions and the comforts. If we use possessions for psychological demands, then obviously it leads to complexity. We use things, don’t we, property, not as a necessity, but as a psychological need? It is property, means self-aggrandisement, does it not? Most of our lives are such, is it not? A title, a position, a house, property, land, virtue, recognition, all that implies, does it not, a psychological need, an inward need

“to be something,” and so when we use property, when our relationship to property is based on the psychological need, then obviously there cannot be a simple life, and therefore there must be a conflict, which is so clear; when I use property, when I use you as means of my psychological gratification, then I must own property — that is “mine,” it is “my country.” Therefore, I must protect it, I must defend it and hence the conflict begins. So it is important, is it not to understand our relationship to property. Not according to any particular plan, the communist or the socialist or the right or the left, to understand it. Obviously, you cannot understand that relationship if you approach it through any particular pattern. So as long as we use property, as a means of self–aggrandisement, there must be a conflict. There must be a society which is based on violence. So it is not an economic problem alone, but much more a psychological problem, and the economists are trying to solve the problem on the economic level and they will always fail, because the significance is much deeper. Aren’t you using property, comfort, power as a means of self-aggrandisement; to know that you have so much money in the bank, that you have a title, vast property, does it not give you importance, a sense of power; if it is not property, you will be an official, a bureaucrat, a commissar an ambassador, and God knows what else; it gives you that sense of satisfaction that you are somebody and on that we base our relationship, and as long as we use another or a thing for our self-aggrandisement, there must be violence, and so the problem is not really of the pattern of economic, or social action, but to understand it is psychological, and therefore there must be a revolution and not merely on the outside. So it is very difficult to be “nothing,” not to demand “to be something,” because most of us are becoming successful, we are all hunting and we are after success, in some form or another, aren’t we? In business, the social world, the political world, as a writer, as a poet, in some form we want recognition, we want success; so the problem is really — is it not — much more psychological than factual, and so, as long as we base our relationship on property, there must be this appalling division of the “haves” and “have-nots,” the rich and the poor, and we are trying to abolish it through revolution, the revolution which is based on an idea, which is a pattern of outside action; how individuals in a society shall behave without the fundamental, radical transformation of the centre, which is the psyche; that is why revolution in the substitution of a pattern is no revolution at all. Revolution can only be at the centre, in the psyche, in the inside, and then it will produce the revolution, extraordinary, but the extraordinary revolution will not bring about the internal revolution. “Do what you will,” and we think by having an outside revolution we can bring about a new world, a new world based on what “should be.” So our problem, is it not, not how to bring about a new pattern or a new substitution, but how to bring about the radical revolution in ourselves? That is the real problem, because what you are, the world is. Your problem is the world’s problem, you are not separate from the world; you are an interrupting process, the world is not without you. So unless there is a revolution at the centre achieved, revolution on the outside has very little meaning and as most of us do not want to change or we want to change superficially or maintain certain things in relation to a permanent demand, and it is only that can really bring about a radical revolution, and it is only a few that will transform the world. It must begin with you as an individual. If you look to the mass, the mass will not bring about transformation; no man has ever “have,” as it is only individuals that “have.” Therefore, you and I must radically transform and in that there is tremendous beauty; in that there is creative thinking; a man who is happy, who loves, does not want possessions, is not carried away by success, does not want power, position, authority. It is the unhappy, the sorrowful that search power, that seek out success. Discontent only leads to further discontent and as most of us are discontent, we do not want to be free from discontent; to be free from discontent is to bring about a fundamental revolution which is contentment, which is not the opposite of discontent; contentment is that state in which there is the understanding of “what is,” and the understanding of “what is” is not of time. It is not in the movement of the past or the future. It is only when the mind can be free, and therefore simple, clean; such a mind alone can be content. It is only the mind that is free, then it will establish right relationship to property. Then you will say: that will take a very long time. It is only a few who can do it. In the meantime the world is going to pieces. Therefore we must organise collectively. It is a very facile argument, a specious argument: that are content. So actually, even though you are organised to bring about collective revolution, it will also take time, and how do you know that you have the key to the future; what gives you the authority and certainty that by your particular revolution you are going to create the marvellous utopia.

So, is it not really important that the problem must be viewed not with a particular level, but profusely, intimately and with integrated approach to the problem and it is the only solution and you cannot be integrated if we approach it through any sense of resistance; through any sense of compulsion or conformity? Therefore, the thing that brings about integration is love. To love the problem , not by an imposition on the problem; so if you really want to solve this problem of right relationship to property, you will be able to solve it only when you understand the whole structure of your “being.” But you say you want quick answers. We want immediate response; we want immediate solution to this problem, and no one on earth can give it. There is no immediate solution to a very complex problem or question. The immediacy is in the response of the individual, not in the response of the problem. You can immediately change if you so desire, but we don’t. So, when you have a crisis you have to change. Crisis understands that you shall approach it with extraordinary completeness, otherwise it is not a crisis; but we do not want crisis in our lives. That is why we have a lawyers, that is why we have priests; that is why we have official revolutionaries. We do not want crisis in our lives; when you are up against it, then you will find the right answer.

It is ten past seven; you want me to answer one more question? Yes. So I answer one more question.

QUESTION: What is self-knowledge, the traditional approach to self-knowledge? Is the knowledge of Atman as distinct from the ego? Is that what you mean by self-knowledge?

ANSWER: Look, Sirs, you are all well-read, aren’t you, in all the religious books? Therefore you know about the Atman, don’t you? Otherwise you do not know anything about it. You have read it in the books and you like the idea and you are set, but you don’t know if it exists or does not exist. You want permanency and Atman guarantees it. Now suppose if you have not read a single book, any religious book — all about

Atman, Paramatan and Super-Atman, what would you do? You may invent, but if you had no previous knowledge, what would be your approach, and that is my approach. I have not read a single religious book, or a psychological book; I do not want them, not that I am conceded. When the whole business is inside you can discover it by yourself, not by looking outside and how do you know otherwise, how do you know that Shankaracharya Buddha or the very latest is not wrong? So, to discover truth, there must be freedom, freedom not at the end, but at the very beginning. Freedom is not at the end; liberation is not an end process; it must be at the beginning, otherwise you cannot discover. Therefore there must be freedom, freedom from the past. So, that is what you and I are going to do to find out. You want to know what is self-knowledge; not of the ego, not of the Atman, I do not know what it means. All that I know is “here I am in entity, in relationship with you, with my wife and children, with the world that is all I know.” That is the actual fact, whether Atman and everything else exists or not, may be a theory, speculation, and speculation is a waste of time. It is for those, for the sluggish, for the thorkeys. Now what am I? That is all that matters; what am I? I am going to find out what I am and see how far I can go in the direction to find out whether it leads, because that is the fact — not the Atman, not the ego, not the super, super, super; I do not think about it even though

Buddha and Christ and everybody talked about it. What I can know is my relationship to property, to people and to ideas. So self-knowledge is the beginning of understanding of relationship. That relationship plays on all levels, not on one particular level, so I have to find out what my relationship is to the property, to my wife, to my society, to my children, my relationship to idea; so relationship is the mirror in which I see myself as I am, and to see it as I am is the beginning of wisdom. Wisdom is not something that you buy in books or go to your Guru to acquire; that is mere information. Wisdom is not information; wisdom is the beginning of self-knowledge, and that wisdom comes when you understand relationship. Now to understand relationship, to see the thing very clearly in relationship, the fact of what you are, there must be no condemnation. There must be no justification; you must look at it with freedom. How can you understand something if you condemn it or wish it to be something other than what it is? So, through understanding of relationship there comes the discovery of every minute, the way of your thinking, the structure of your mind; until the mind does not understand its total process there can be no freedom, not only of the conscious, but of the unconscious. So, through relationship of everyday contact, of everyday action, you come to a point when you see that the “thinker” is not different from “thought,” because when you say the ego is different from the Atman, it is still within the field of thought, and without understanding the process of thought, its functions are utterly futile, though you may call them realities, there is no existence, they are merely the prejudices of thought; so we have to understand the thought, and that can be understood only in relationship. So then there is the problem of the thinker and the thought and I am going into the question of self-knowledge which begun with the understanding of relationship, which we shall discuss more later. So, there is the question of the thinker and the thought, the experiencer and the experienced, with which we are familiar. Is there a thinker as a separate entity from thought. Surely there is no separate entity; thought has created this separate entity called the “thinker,” so there is only the thought. Thought is the response of memory. Both the conscious as well as unconscious, the hidden and the open. So that thought is response of memory. Memory is experience. Experience which is response to a challenge, that is the experienced, that is the total process of our consciousness, is it not? Memory experience, which is the response to challenge, then the naming process, then the whole cultivation of memory. Memory, which responds as thought and thought in relationship. The whole process of thought is what we call “consciousness.” “That is all I am.” That is all I know. That is all my mind can function within the field of time, my mind can function within the field of “known;” that it cannot function beyond that field. So our problem is, what is the mind, the known? Because I know now the whole process of my thinking, which is leading me to that point, and can the mind go beyond thought which is the result of the “known?” Obviously not; because thought when it goes beyond it is its own projection. It can only project the known; it cannot experience the unknown. Thought cannot experience the unknown, it can only experience that which has projected, which is the known. Thought is the mind, which is the result of time, of the past. What I want to know is if the mind can go beyond. Obviously it cannot, because the “beyond” the unknown is not of time. So the mind must come to an end, which means the mind must be still. So meditation is not the becoming of something, but the understanding of the total process of relationship, which is self-knowledge. Then when the mind is still, not to be altogether compelled, only then is there a possibility of experiencing the unknown.

Now, the next problem there is: Can the mind which is the result of experience, which is memory, can such a mind experience the “unknown?” You understand the problem? Can the mind, which is the product of time, experience the “timeless?” Then, if it does not, what is it that it experiences, and is truth a matter of remembrance, because experiences, remembers. It is its function to remember and is truth a matter to be remembered, we will discuss all that later. But just listen to it and find out, listen to what is being said and not resist it, just play with it, go with it. The point is this: the mind is the result of time, time being memory. Memory says “I am experienced, or not experienced.” Is “truth” the unknown, the immeasurable, a matter of experience which means a matter to be remembered? Now if you remember something, is it not already the known? So is it not possible to experience something which is not in terms of time, which means experiencing, seeing the truth from moment to moment. If I remember truth it is no longer truth. Because that is merely a memory, it is a matter of time, matter of continuity. So truth is not something of the time, truth is a continuity. The truth of the Buddha is not the truth which you discovered today. Truth is never the same. Truth has no continuity; it is only from moment to moment, when not remembered; that means when mind is completely silent, then only is there truth, which is from moment to moment and not remembered. Truth is not something to be experienced, to be held and worshipped, and searched after. The mind can only experience it or a mind can only be free to experience the timeless when it has freed from all conditions. So, self-knowledge is the understanding of conditioning.

Question: Does it extinct (interrupted).

Answer: This is not the time to discuss. We discuss on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

What is important is to understand the total process. We will discuss it separately. But we will have to see that truth is not something to be remembered, or that which is remembered is of time, is a thing of the past, and truth can never be of the past, relates not in the future; it can only be in the present, in that where there is no time. Time is the process of the mind, mind is thought, thought is the response of memory. Memory is the experience of challenge and response, and the response, being inadequate, creates the problem and the problem is relationship. So, the understanding of the total process of the “self” is the understanding of relationship in daily life, and that understanding leads when the mind is free, free from time, therefore experiencing relate from moment to moment in remembering; it is no longer, it can be no longer said to be experience, it is quite a different state altogether. “It is a state of being.” And that state of being is “bliss,” not the bliss that you learn in books and repeat like gramophone records. A man who is happy does not repeat. It is a state of being, when a man is happy has no problems. Life has no problems. It is a mind that creates the problems.

AG