13th
I think it’s the quietness of the place, of the green slopes of the mountains, the beauty of the trees and the cleanliness, that and other things, has made the pressure and the strain far greater; the head has been bad all day; it becomes worse when one is by oneself. All last night it seems to have been going on and woke up several times shouting and groaning; even during rest, in the afternoon, it was bad, accompanied by shouting. The body is completely relaxed and at rest here. Last night, after the long and lovely drive through mountainous country, on entering the room, that strange sacred blessing was there. The other also felt it. The other also felt the quiet, that penetrating atmosphere. There is a feeling of great beauty and love and of mature fullness.
Power is derived from asceticism, from action, from position, from virtue, from domination and so on. All such forms of power are evil. It corrupts and perverts. The use of money, talent, cleverness to gain power or deriving power from any use of these is evil.
But there is a power which is in no way related to that power which is evil. This power is not to be bought through sacrifice, virtue, good works and beliefs, nor is it to be bought through worship, prayers and self-denying or self-destructive meditations. All effort to become or to be must wholly, naturally, cease. Only then that power which is not evil, can be.
14th
The whole process has been going on all day – the pressure, the strain and the pain at the back of the head; woke up shouting several times, and even during the day there was involuntary groaning and shouting. Last night that sacred feeling filled the room and the other felt it also.
How easy it is to deceive oneself about almost everything, especially about deeper and more subtle demands and wishes. To be utterly free of all such urges and demands is arduous. But yet it is essential to be free from them or else the brain breeds every form of illusion. The urge for the repetition of an experience however pleasant, beautiful, fruitful, is the soil in which sorrow grows. The passion of sorrow is as limiting as the passion of power. The brain must cease to make its own ways and be utterly passive.
15th
The whole process was bad last night; it has left one rather tired and sleepless.
Woke up in the middle of the night, with a sense of immense and measureless strength. It was not the strength that will or desire has put together but the strength that is there in a river, in a mountain, in a tree. It is in man when every form of desire and will have completely ceased. It has no value, has no profit to a human being, but without it the human being is not, nor the tree. The action of man is choice and will and in such action there is contradiction and conflict and so sorrow. All such action has a cause, a motive and hence it is reaction. Action of this strength has no cause, no motive and therefore is immeasurable and the essence.
16th
The whole process went on most of the night; it was rather intense. How much can the body stand! The whole body was quivering and, this morning, woke up with the head shaking.
There was, this morning that peculiar sacredness, filling the room. It had great penetrating power, entering into every corner of one’s being, filling, cleansing, making everything of itself. The other felt it too. It’s the thing that every human being craves for and because they crave for it, it eludes them. The monk, the priest, the sannyasi torture their bodies and their character in their longing for this but it evades them. For it cannot be bought; neither sacrifice, virtue nor prayer can bring this love. This life, this love cannot be if death is the means. All seeking, all asking must wholly cease.
Truth cannot be exact. What can be measured is not truth. That which is not living can be measured and its height be found.
17th
We were going up the path of a steep wooded side of a mountain and presently sat on a bench. Suddenly, most unexpectedly that sacred benediction came upon us, the other felt it too, without our saying anything. As it several times filled a room, this time it seemed to cover the mountainside across the wide, extending valley and beyond the mountains. It was everywhere. All space seemed to disappear; what was far, the wide gap, the distant snow-covered peaks and the person sitting on the bench faded away. There was not one or two or many but only this immensity. The brain had lost all its responses; it was only an instrument of observation, it was seeing, not as the brain belonging to a particular person, but as a brain which is not conditioned by time-space, as the essence of all brains.
It was a quiet night and the whole process was not so intense. On waking this morning, there was an experiencing whose duration was perhaps a minute, an hour or timeless. An experiencing that is informed with time ceases to be experiencing; what has continuity ceases to be the experiencing. On waking there was in the very depths, in the measureless depth of the total mind, an intense flame alive and burning furiously, of attention, of awareness, of creation. The word G not the thing; the symbol G not the real. The fires that burn on the surface of life pass, die away, leaving sorrow and ashes and remembrance. These fires are called life but it’s not life. It’s decay. The fire of creation that is destruction is life. In it there is no beginning, no ending, neither tomorrow or yesterday. It’s there and no surface activity will ever uncover it. The brain must die for this life to be.
18th
The process has been very acute, preventing sleep; even in the morning and in the afternoon shouting and groaning. The pain has been rather bad.
Woke up this morning with a great deal of pain but at the same time there was a flash of a seeing that was revealing. Our eyes and brain register the outward things, trees, mountains, swift running streams; accumulate knowledge, technique and so on. With that same eyes and brain, trained to observe, to choose, to condemn and justify, we turn inward, look inward, recognize objects, build up ideas, which are organized into reason. This inward look does not go very far, for it’s still within the limitation of its own observation and reason. This inward gaze is still the outward look and so there’s not much difference between the two. What may appear to be different may be similar.
But there’s an inward observation which is not the outward observation turned inward. The brain and the eye which observe only partially do not comprehend the total seeing. They must be alive completely but still; they must cease to choose and judge but be passively aware. Then the inward seeing is without the border of time-space. In this flash a new perception is born.
19th
It had been rather bad all the afternoon of yesterday and it seems more painful. Towards the evening that sacredness came and filled the room and the other felt it too. All night it was fairly quiet, though the pressure and strain were there, like the sun behind the clouds; early this morning the process began again.
It appears one’s awakened merely to register a certain experience; this has happened quite often, for the past year. One was awakened this morning with a living feeling of joy; it was taking place as one woke up; it wasn’t a thing in the past. It was actually taking place. It was coming, this ecstasy, from ‘outside’, not self-induced; it was being pushed through the system, flowing through the organism, with great energy and volume. The brain was not taking part in it but only registering it, not as a remembrance but as an actual fact which was taking place. There was, it seemed, immense strength and vitality behind this ecstasy; it wasn’t sentimental nor a feeling, an emotion but as solid and real as that stream crashing down the mountain-side or that solitary pine on the green mountain slope. All feeling and emotion are related to the brain and as love is not, so was this ecstasy. It is with the greatest difficulty, the brain can recall it.
Early this morning there was a benediction that seemed to cover the earth and fill the room. With it comes an all consuming quietness, a stillness that seems to have within it all movement.
20th
The process was particularly intense yesterday afternoon. In the car, waiting, one was almost oblivious of what was going on around one. The intensity increased and it was almost unbearable so that one was forced to lie down. Fortunately there was someone in the room.
The room became full with that benediction. Now what followed is almost impossible to put down in words; words are such dead things, with definite set meaning and what took place was beyond all words and description. It was the centre of all creation; it was a purifying seriousness that cleansed the brain of every thought and feeling; its seriousness was as lightning which destroys and burns up; the profundity of it was not measurable, it was there immovable, impenetrable, a solidity that was as light as the heavens. It was in the eyes, in the breath. It was in the eyes and the eyes could see. The eyes that saw, that looked were wholly different from the eyes of the organ and yet they were the same eyes. There was only seeing, the eyes that saw beyond time-space. There was impenetrable dignity and a peace that was the essence of all movement, action. No virtue touched it for it was beyond all virtue and sanctions of man. There was love that was utterly perishable and so it had the delicacy of all new things, vulnerable, destructible and yet it was beyond all this. It was there imperishable, unnameable, the unknowing. No thought could ever penetrate it; no action could ever touch it. It was ‘pure’, untouched and so ever dyingly beautiful.
All this seemed to affect the brain; it was not as it was before. (Thought is such a trivial thing, necessary but trivial.) Because of it, relationship seems to have changed. As a terrific storm, a destructive earthquake gives a new course to the rivers, changes the landscape, digs deep into the earth, so it has levelled the contours of thought, changed the shape of the heart.
21st
The whole process is going on as usual, in spite of cold and feverish state. It has become more acute and more insistent. One wonders how long the body can carry on.
Yesterday, as we were walking up a beautiful narrow valley, its steep sides dark with pines and green fields full of wild flowers, suddenly, most unexpectedly, for we were talking of other things, a benediction descended upon us, like gentle rain. We became the centre of it. It was gentle, pressing, infinitely tender and peaceful, enfolding us in a power that was beyond all fault and reason.
Early this morning, on waking, changing, changeless purifying seriousness and an ecstasy that had no cause. It simply was there. And during the day, whatever one did it was there in the background and it came directly and immediately to the fore when one was quiet. There is an urgency and beauty in it.
No imagination or desire could ever formulate such profound seriousness.
22nd
Waiting in the doctor’s dark, airless office, that benediction, which no desire can construct, came and filled the small room. It was there till we left. If it was felt by the doctor it’s impossible to say.
Why is it that there is deterioration? Inwardly as well as outwardly. Why? Time brings destruction to all mechanical organizations; it wears out by use and disease every form of organism. Why should there be deterioration inwardly, psychologically? 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? Seeing the fact leads to one thing, and opinions, explanations, to another. Seeing the fact that we decline, deteriorate is all important and not the why and wherefore of it. Explanation has very little significance in face of a fact, but to be satisfied with explanations, with words is one of the major factors of deterioration. Why war and not peace? The fact is we are violent; conflict, inside and outside the skin, is part of our daily life – ambition and success. Seeing this fact and not the cunning explanation and the subtle word, puts an end to deterioration. Choice, one of the major causes of decline, must wholly cease if it’s to come to an end. The desire to fulfil and the satisfaction and sorrow that exist in its shadow, is also one of the factors of deterioration.
Woke up early this morning, to experience that benediction. One was ‘forced’ to sit up to be in that clarity and beauty. Later in the morning sitting on a roadside bench under a tree one felt the immensity of it. It gave shelter, protection like the tree overhead whose leaves gave shelter against the strong mountain sun and yet allowed light to come through. All relationship is such protection in which there’s freedom, and because there’s freedom, there is shelter.
23rd
Woke up early this morning with an enormous sense of power, beauty and incorruptibility. It was not something that had happened, an experience that was past and one woke up to remember it as in a dream, but something that was actually taking place. One was aware of something utterly incorruptible, in which nothing could possibly exist that could become corrupt, deteriorate. It was too immense for the brain to grasp, to remember; it could only register, mechanically, that there is such a ‘state’ of incorruption. Experiencing such a state is vastly important; it was there, limitless, untouchable, impenetrable.
Because of its incorruptibility, there was in it beauty. Not the beauty that fades nor something put together by the hand of man, nor the evil with its beauty. One felt that in its presence all essence exists and so it was sacred. It was a life in which nothing could perish. Death is incorruptible but man makes of it a corruption as, for him, life is.
With it all, there was that sense of power, strength as solid as that mountain which nothing could shatter, which no sacrifice, prayer, virtue could ever touch.
It was there, immense, which no wave of thought could corrupt, a thing remembered. It was there and the eyes, the breath were of it.
Time, laziness, corrupts. It must have gone on for a certain period. Dawn was just coming and there was dew on the car outside and on the grass. The sun wasn’t up yet but the sharp snow peak was clear in the grey-blue sky; it was an enchanting morning, with not a cloud. But it wouldn’t last, it was too lovely.
Why should all this happen to us? No explanation is good enough, though one can invent a dozen. But certain things are fairly clear. 1. One must be wholly ‘indifferent’ to it coming and going. 2. There must be no desire to continue the experience or to store it away in memory. 3. There must be a certain physical sensitivity, a certain indifference to comfort. 4. There must be self-critical humorous approach. But even if one had all these, by chance, not through deliberate cultivation and humility, even then, they are not enough. Something totally different is necessary or nothing is necessary. It must come and you can never go after it, do what you will. You can also add love to the list but it is beyond love. One thing is certain, the brain can never comprehend it nor can it contain it. Blessed is he to whom it is given. And you can add also a still, quiet brain.
24th
The process has not been so intense, as the body for some days has not been well, but though it is weak, now and then one can feel the intensity of it. It’s strange how this process adjusts itself to circumstance.
Yesterday, driving through the narrow valley, a mountain stream noisily making its way beside the wet road, there was this benediction. It was very strong and everything was bathed in it. The noise of the stream was part of it and the high waterfall which became the stream were in it. It was like the gentle rain that was coming down and one became utterly vulnerable; the body seemed to have become light as a leaf, exposed and trembling. This went on through the long, cool drive; talk became monosyllabic; the beauty of it seemed incredible. All the evening it remained and though there was laughter, the solid, the impenetrable seriousness remained.
On waking this morning, early when the sun was still below the horizon, there was the ecstasy of this seriousness. It filled the heart and the brain and there was a sense of immovability.
To look is important. We look to immediate things and out of immediate necessities to the future, coloured by the past. Our seeing is very limited and our eyes are accustomed to near things. Our look is as bound by time-space as our brain. We never look, we never see beyond this limitation; we do not know how to look through and beyond these fragmentary frontiers. But the eyes have to see beyond them, penetrating deeply and widely, without choosing, without shelter; they have to wander beyond man-made frontiers of ideas and values and to feel beyond love.
Then there is a benediction which no god can give.
25th
In spite of a meeting, the process is going on, rather gently but going on.
Woke up this morning, rather early, with a sense of a mind that had penetrated into unknown depths. It was as though the mind itself was going into itself, deeply and widely and the journey seemed to have been without movement. And there was this experience of immensity in abundance and a richness that was incorruptible.
It’s strange that though every experience, state, is utterly different, it is still the same movement; though it seems to change, it is still the changeless.
26th
All yesterday afternoon the process was on and it was pretty bad. Walking in the deep shadow of a mountain, Beside a chattering stream, in the intensity of the process, one felt utterly vulnerable, naked and very open; one hardly seemed to exist. And the beauty of the snow-covered mountain, held in the cup of two dark pine slopes of curving hills, was greatly moving.
Early in the morning when the sun was not yet up and the dew on the grass, still in bed, lying quietly, without any thought or movement, there was a seeing, not the superficial seeing with the eyes but seeing through the eyes from behind the head. The eyes and from behind the head were only the instrument through which the immeasurable past was seeing into the immeasurable space that had no time. And later, still in bed, there was a seeing in which all life seemed to be contained.
How easy it is to deceive oneself, to project desirable states which are actually experienced, especially when they are pleasure. There’s no illusion, no deception, when there’s no desire, conscious or unconscious, for any experience of any kind, when one’s wholly indifferent to the coming and going of all experience, when one’s not asking for anything.