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We are seeking to overcome this fear, this emptiness; we are seeking something that can heal the aching agony of inner insufficiency. As long as you are convinced that you can find some escape you will go on seeking but is it not part of wisdom to see that all escape, no matter how alluring, is useless? When the truth about escape dawns on you will you persist in your search?
Obviously not. Then we accept inevitably what is; this complete surrender to what is, is the liberating Truth, not the attainment of the objects of search. Our life is conflict, pain; we crave security, permanency, but are caught in the net of the impermanent.
We are the impermanent. Can the impermanent find the Eternal, the Timeless? Can illusion find Reality?
Can ignorance find wisdom? Only with the cessation of the impermanent is there the permanent; with the cessation of ignorance is there wisdom. We are concerned with the cessation of the impermanent, the self.
One of our great teachers has said, "Seek and ye shall find". Is it not advantageous to seek? By this question we betray ourselves and how little we are aware of the ways of our thought.
We are forever thinking of what is advantageous for us and that we desire. Do you think a mind that is seeking profit can find truth? If it is seeking truth as an advantage, then it is no longer seeking truth.
Truth is beyond and above all personal advantage and gain. A mind that is seeking gain, achievement, can never find Truth. The search for gain is for security, for refuge, and Truth is not a security, a refuge.
Truth is the liberator, sweeping away all refuge and security. Besides, why do you seek? Is it not because you are in confusion and pain?
Instead of seeking an escape through activity, through psychologists, through priests, through rituals, must you not search out the cause of conflict and sorrow in yourself? The cause is the self, craving. The deliverance from confusion and pain is in yourself and not another can free you.
If we can open our consciousness to truth is that not sufficient? We revert to this question in different ways over and over again. Can the mind, the self-consciousness, which is the product of time, understand or experience the Timeless?
When the mind seeks will it find Reality, God? When the mind asserts that it must be open to Reality is it capable of being so? If thought is aware that it is the product of ignorance, of the limited self, then there is a possibility for it to cease formulating, imagining, being occupied with itself.
Only through awareness can thought transcend itself, not through will, which is another form of self-expansive desire. When are we joyous? Is it the result of calculation, of an act of will?
It happens when conflicting problems and demands of desire are absent. As a lake is calm when the winds stop so the mind is still when craving with its problems ceases. The mind cannot induce itself to be quiet, to be still; the lake is not calm till the winds cease.
Till the problems the self creates cease there can be no tranquillity. The mind has to understand itself and not try to escape into illusion, or seek something that it is incapable of experiencing or understanding. Is there a technique for being aware?
What does this question imply? You seek a method by which you may learn to be aware. Awareness is not the result of practice, habit or time.
As a tooth that causes intense pain has to be attended to immediately so sorrow, if intense, demands urgent alleviation. But instead we seek an escape or explain it away; we avoid the real issue which is the self. Because we are not facing our conflict, our sorrow, we assure ourselves lazily that we must make an effort to be aware and so we demand a technique for becoming aware.
So it is not by an act of will that truth is uncovered but through tranquil vulnerability the Real comes into being. We have been considering the problem of intelligence, that intelligence which has been developed during the course of self-assertive struggles and self-protective pursuits, of acquisitive demands and imitative conformities; we saw that with that intelligence we hoped to solve our conflicts and discover or experience Truth or God. Can that intelligence ever experience the Real?
If it cannot then how can it come to an end or be transformed? We saw that this is possible only through passive awareness and that we can at any time be aware without the will to become aware. To understand what is implied in awareness we examined greed and tried to understand its activities; greed not only for the tangible but also for power, for authority; greed for affection, for knowledge, for service and so on; we saw that we either condemn or justify greed thereby identifying ourselves with it.
We saw, too, that awareness is a process of discovery which becomes blocked through identification. When we are rightly aware of greed in its complexity there is no struggle against it, no negative assertion of non-greed, which is only another form of self-assertiveness; and in that awareness we will find that greed has ceased. Awareness is not the result of practice for practice implies the formation of habit; habit is the denial of awareness.
Awareness is of the moment and not a cumulative result. To say to ourselves that we shall become aware is not to be aware. To say that we are going to be non-greedy is merely to continue to be greedy, to be unaware of it.
How do we approach a complex problem? We do not surely meet complexity with complexity; we must approach it simply and the greater our simplicity the greater will be the clarification. To understand and experience Reality there must be utter simplicity and tranquillity.
When we suddenly see a magnificent scenery or come upon a great thought, or listen to great music, we are utterly still. Our minds are not simple but to recognize complexity is to be simple. If you would understand yourself, your complexity, there must be open receptivity, the simplicity of non-identification.
But we are not aware of beauty or complexity and so we chatter endlessly. We must not criticize then if we are to be aware? Without probing deeply into oneself self-knowledge is not possible.
What do we mean by self-criticism? The function of the mind is to probe and to comprehend. Without this probing into ourselves, without this deep awareness, there can be no understanding.
We often indulge in the stupidity of criticizing others but few are capable of probing deeply into themselves. The function of the mind is not only to probe, to delve, but also to be silent. In silence there is comprehension.
We are ever probing but we are rarely silent; in us rarely are there alert, passive intervals of tranquillity; we probe and are soon weary of it without the creative silence. But self-probing is as essential for the clarity of understanding as is stillness. As the earth is allowed to lie fallow during the winter so must thought be still after deep searching.
This very fallowness is its renewal. If we delve deeply into ourselves and are still then in this stillness, in this openness, there is understanding. This complexity is so deep that one does not seem to have an opportunity for quietness.
Must there be an opportunity to be still, to be quiet? Must you create the occasion, the right environment to be peaceful? Is it then peace?
With right probing there comes right stillness. When do you look into yourself? When the problem demands it, when it is urgent, surely.
But if you are seeking an opportunity to be silent then you are not aware. Self-probing comes with conflict and sorrow, and there must be passive receptivity to understand. Surely self-probing, stillness and understanding are in awareness a single process and not three separate states.
Would you enlarge that point? Let us take envy. Any resolution not to be envious is neither simple nor effective, it is even stupid.
To determine not to be envious is to build walls of conclusions around oneself and these walls prevent understanding. But if you are aware you will discover the ways of envy; if there is interested alertness you will find its ramifications at different levels of the self. Each probing brings with it silence and understanding; as one cannot continuously probe deeply, which would only result in exhaustion, there must be spaces of alert inactivity.
This watchful stillness is not the outcome of weariness; with self-probing there come easily and naturally moments of passive alertness. The more complex the problem the more intense is the probing and the silence. There need be no specially created occasion or opportunity for silence; the very perception of the complexity of a problem brings with it deep silence.
Our difficulty lies in that we have built around ourselves conclusions which we call understanding. These conclusions are hindrances to understanding. If you go into this more deeply you will see that there must be complete abandonment of all that has been accumulated for the being of understanding and wisdom.
To be simple is not a conclusion, an intellectual concept for which you strive. There can be simplicity only when the self with its accumulation ceases. It is comparatively easy to renounce family, property, fame, things of the world; that is only a beginning; but it is extremely difficult to put away all knowledge, all conditioned memory.
In this freedom, this aloneness, there is experience which is beyond and above all creations of the mind. Do not let us ask whether the mind ever can be free from conditioning, from influence; we shall find this out as we proceed in self-knowledge and understanding. Thought which is a result cannot understand the Causeless.
The ways of accumulation are subtle; accumulation is self-assertiveness, as is imitation. To come to a conclusion is to build a wall around oneself, a protective security which prevents understanding. Accumulated conclusions do not make for wisdom but only sustain the self.
Without accumulation there is no self. A mind weighed down with accumulations is incapable of following the swift movement of life, incapable of deep and pliable awareness. Are you not encouraging separateness, individualism?
He who is influenced is separate, knowing the division of the high and the low, of merit and demerit. Aloneness in the sense of being free from influence is not separative, not antagonizing. It is a state to be experienced, not speculated upon.
The self is ever separative, it is the cause of division, conflict and sorrow. Do you not feel separate; are not your activities those of a self-assertive, self-expansive individual? Obviously your thoughts and activities are now individualistic, narrow; it is your work, your achievement, your country, your belief, even your God.
You are separate and so your social structure is based on self-assertiveness which causes untold misery and destruction; you may assert we are all one but in actual daily life your activities are separative, individualistic, competitive, ruthless, leading ultimately to war and misery. If we are aware of this self-aggressive process in ourselves and understand its implications then there is a possibility of bring about a peaceful and happy relationship between man and man. The very awareness of what is, is a liberative process.
So long as we are unaware of what we are, and are trying to become something else, so long will there be distortion and pain. The very awareness of what I am brings about transformation and the freedom of understanding. Cannot one think about the Uncreated, about Reality, God?
The created cannot think about the Uncreated. It can think only about its own projection which is not the Real. Can thought which is the result of time, of influence, of imitation, think about that which is not measurable?
It can only think about that which is known. What is knowable is not the Real, what is known is ever receding into the past and what is past is not the Eternal. You may speculate upon the unknown but you cannot think about it.
When you think about something you are probing into it, subjecting it to different moods and influences. But such thinking is not meditation. Creativeness is a state of being which is not the outcome of thinking.
Right meditation opens the door to the Real. But let us go back to what we were considering. Are we aware that our so-called thinking is the result of influence, of conditioning, of imitation?
Are you not influenced by propaganda, religious or secular, by the politician and the priest, by the economist and the advertiser? Collective worship and regimentation of thought are alike and both hinder the discovery and experience of Reality. Propaganda is not the instrument of Truth, whether of organized religion or politics or business.
If we would discover Truth we must be aware of the subtleties of influence, of challenge and of our response. Learning a technique, a method, does not lead to creative being. When the past ceases to influence the present, when time ceases, there is creative being which can be experienced only in deep meditation.
Is not thinking the initial step to creativeness? The initial step is to be self-aware. Our thinking, as we said, is the result of the past; it is the result of conditioning, of imitation; that being so all effort it makes to free itself is vain.
All it can do and must do is be aware of its own conditioning and cause; through the understanding of the cause there comes freedom from it. If we were aware of our stupidity, ignorance then there would be a possibility of wisdom; but to consider stupidity as a necessary beginning for intelligence is wrong thinking. If we recognize that we are stupid then that very recognition is the beginning of thoughtfulness; but recognizing it, if we try to become clever, then that very becoming is another form of stupidity.
Any definite pattern of thought prevents understanding. Understanding is not substitution; mere change of patterns, of conclusions, does not yield understanding. Understanding comes with self-awareness and self-knowledge.
There is no substitute for self-knowledge. Is it not important first to understand oneself, to be aware of one's own conditioning rather than seek understanding outside of oneself? Understanding comes with the awareness of what is.
Being imitative what shall we do? Be self-aware which will reveal the hidden motives of imitation, envy, fear, the craving for security, for power and so on. This awareness when free of self-identification brings understanding and tranquillity which lead to the realization of supreme wisdom.
Is not this process of awareness, of self-unfoldment another form of acquisition? Is not probing another means of self-expansive acquisitiveness? If the questioner experimented with awareness he would discover the truth about his question.
Understanding is never accumulative; understanding comes only when there is stillness, when there is passive alertness. There is no stillness, no passivity when the mind is acquisitive; acquisitiveness is ever restless, envious. As we said, awareness is not cumulative; through identification accumulation is built up, giving continuity to the self through memory.
To be aware without self-identification, without condemnation or justification is extremely arduous, for our response is based on pleasure and pain, reward and punishment. How few are aware of constant identification; if we were we would not ask these questions which indicate unawareness. As a sleeper dreams that he must awaken but does not, for it is only a dream, so we are asking these questions without actually experimenting with awareness.
Is there anything that one can do to be aware? Are you not in conflict, in sorrow? If you are do you not search out its cause?
The cause is the self, its torturing desires. To struggle with these desires only creates resistance, further pain, but if you are choicelessly aware of your craving then there comes creative understanding. It is the truth of this understanding that liberates, not your struggle against resistance to envy, anger, pride and so on.
So awareness is not an act of will for will is resistance, the effort made by the self through desire to acquire, to grow, whether positively or negatively. Be aware of acquisitiveness, passively observing its ways on different levels; you will find this rather arduous, for thought-feeling sustains itself on identification and it is this which prevents the understanding of accumulation. Be aware take the journey of self-discovery.
Do not ask what is going to happen on this journey which only betrays anxiety, fear, indicating your desire for security, for certainty. This desire for refuge prevents self-knowledge, self-unfoldment and so, understanding. Be aware of this inward anxiety and directly experience it; then you will discover what this awareness reveals.
But unfortunately most of you only desire to talk about the journey without undertaking it. What happens to us at the end of the journey? Is it not important for the questioner to be aware of why he is asking this question?
Is it not because of the fear of the unknown, the desire to gain an end, or the assurance of self-continuity? Being in sorrow we seek happiness; being impermanent we search after the permanent; being in darkness we look for light. But if we were aware of what is, then the truth of sorrow, of impermanency, of imprisonment would liberate thought from its own ignorance.
Is there no such thing as creative thinking? It would be rather vain to consider what is creativeness. If we were aware of our conditioning then the truth of this would bring about creative being.
To speculate upon creative being is a hindrance; all speculation is a hindrance to understanding. Only when the mind is simple, purged of all self-deception and cunning, cleansed of all accumulation, is there the Real. The purgation of the mind is not an act of will nor the outcome of imitative compulsion.
Awareness of what is, is liberating. As this is the last talk of this series perhaps it might be well to make a brief summary of what we have been considering during the past five Sundays. We have been discussing whether the process of what we call intelligence can resolve any of our problems and sorrows; whether the ant-like activity which has developed self-protective intelligence can bring about enlightenment and peace.
This activity on the surface, called intelligence, cannot resolve our many difficulties for within there is still confusion, turmoil and darkness. This intelligence has been developed through the expansion of the self, the ego, the me and the mine; this activity is the outcome of inner insufficiency, incompleteness. Outwardly thought is active, building and destroying, contradicting and modifying, renewing and suppressing; but within there is void and despair.
The outer activity of plastic and steel, reform and counter reform, is ever lost in the inward emptiness and confusion. You may build wonderful structures or organize spaciously over a smoldering volcano but what you construct is soon smothered by ashes and destroyed. So this expansive activity of the self, this intelligence, however alert, capable and industrious, cannot penetrate through its own darkness to Reality.
This intelligence cannot at any time resolve its own conflicts and miseries for they are the outcome of its own activity. This intelligence is incapable of discovering Truth and only Truth can free us from ever increasing conflicts and sorrows. We further considered how this self-expansive intelligence is to cease reshaping itself negatively.
Whether positive or negative, the activity of craving is still within the framework of the self and can this activity ever come to an end? We said that only through self-awareness can this accumulative intelligence of the self cease. We saw this awareness to be from moment to moment, without cumulative power; that in this awareness self-identification-condemnationmodification cannot take place and so there is deep and full understanding.
We said that this awareness is not progressive but an instantaneous perception and that the thought of progressive becoming prevents immediate clarification. This morning we shall consider meditation. In understanding it we can perhaps comprehend the full and deep significance of passive awareness.
Awareness is right meditation and without meditation there can be no self-knowledge. Earnestness in the discovery of one's motives is more important than to seek out a method of meditation. The more earnest one is the more capacity one has to probe and to perceive.
So it is essential to be earnest rather than to form and pursue a conclusion, to be earnest rather than arbitrarily hold to an intention. If we merely hold to an intention, a conclusion, a resolution, thought becomes narrow, obstinate, fixed, but if there is earnestness this very quality is capable of deep penetration. The difficulty is in being constantly earnest.
Spiritual window shopping is not an indication of seriousness. If you have the capacity to allow thought to unroll itself fully then you will perceive that one thought contains, or is related to, all thought. There is no need to go from teacher to teacher, from guru to guru, from leader to leader, for all things are contained in you, the beginning and the end.
None can help you to discover the Real; no ritual, no collective worship, no authority can help you. Another may point out the direction but to make of him an authority, a gateway to the Real, a necessity, is to be ignorant, which breeds fear and superstition. To delve deeply within oneself and discover needs earnestness.
This probing we consider tedious, uninspiring, so we depend upon stimulants, Masters, saviours, leaders, to encourage us to understand ourselves. This encouragement or stimulation becomes a necessity, an addiction, and weakens the quality of earnestness. Being in contradiction and sorrow we think we are incapable of finding a solution so we look to another or try to find the answer in a book.
To look within demands earnest application which is not brought about through the practice of any method. It comes through serious interest and awareness. If one is interested in something thought pursues it, consciously or unconsciously, in spite of fatigue and distraction.
If you are interested in painting then every light, every shade has meaning; you do not have to exert to be interested, you do not have to force yourself to observe but through the very intensity of interest even unconsciously you are observing, discovering, experiencing. Similarly if there is an interest in the comprehension and dissolution of sorrow then that very interest turns the pages of the book of self-knowledge. To have a goal, an end to be achieved, prevents self-knowledge; earnest awareness reveals the ways of the self.
Without self-knowledge there can be no understanding; self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom. Our thought is the result of the past; our thinking is based on the past, upon conditioning. Without comprehending this past there is no understanding of the Real.
The comprehension of the past lies through the present. The Real is not the reward for self-knowledge. The Real is Causeless and thought that has cause cannot experience it.
Without a foundation there can be no lasting structure and the right foundation for understanding is self-knowledge. So all right thinking is the outcome of self-knowledge. If I do not know myself how can I understand anything else?
For without self-knowledge all knowledge is in vain. Without self-knowledge incessant activity is of ignorance; this incessant activity, inner or outer, only causes destruction and misery. Understanding of the ways of the self leads to freedom.
Virtue is freedom, orderliness; without order, freedom, there can be no experiencing of the Real. In virtue there is freedom, not in the becoming virtuous. The desire to become, negatively or positively, is self-expansive and in the expansion of the self there can be no freedom.
You said the Real should not be an incentive. It seems to me that if I try to think of the Real I am better able to understand myself and my difficulties. Is it possible to think about the Real?
We may be able to formulate, imagine, speculate upon what we consider the Real to be but is it the Real? Can we think about the unknowable? Can we think, meditate upon the Timeless when our thought is the result of the past, of time?
The past is ever the Mown and thought which is based on it can only create the known. So to think about Truth is to be caught in the net of ignorance. If thought is able to think about Truth then it will not be Truth.
Truth is a state of being in which the so-called activity of thought has ceased. Thinking, as we know it, is the result of the self-expansive process of time, of the past; it is the result of the movement of the known to the known. Thought which is the outcome of a cause can never formulate the Causeless.
It can only think about the known for it is the product of the known. What is known is not the Real. Our thought is occupied with the constant search for security, for certainty.
Self-expansive intelligence by its very nature craves a refuge, either through negation or assertion. How can a mind that is ever seeking certainty, stimulation, encouragement, possibly think of that which is illimitable? You may read about it which is unfortunate, you may verbalize it which is a waste of time, but it is not the Real.
When you say that by thinking about Truth you can better solve your difficulties and sorrows, you are using the supposed truth as a palliative; as with all drugs, sleep and dullness soon follow. Why seek external stimulants when the problem demands an understanding of its maker? As I was saying, virtue gives freedom but there is no freedom in becoming virtuous.
There is a vast and unbridgeable difference between being and becoming. Is there a difference between truth and virtue? Virtue gives freedom for thought to be tranquil, to experience the Real.
So virtue is not an end in itself, only Truth is. To be a slave to passion is to be without freedom and in freedom alone can there be discovery and experience of the Real. Greed like anger is a disturbing factor, is it not?
Envy is ever restless, never still. Craving is ever changing the object of its fulfillment, from things to passion, to virtue, to the idea of God. The greed for Reality is the same as the greed for possessions.
Craving comes through perception, contact, sensation; desire seeks fulfillment so there is identification, the me and the mine. Being satiated with things desire pursues other forms of gratification, more subtle forms of fulfillment in relationship, in knowledge, in virtue, in the realization of God. Craving is the root cause of all conflict and sorrow.
All forms of becoming, negative or positive, cause conflict, resistance. Is there any difference between awareness and that of which we are aware? Is the observer different from his thoughts?
The observer and the observed are one; the thinker and his thoughts are one. To experience the thinker and his thought as one is very arduous for the thinker is ever taking shelter behind his thought; he separates himself from his thoughts to safeguard himself, to give himself continuity, permanency; he modifies or changes his thoughts, but he remains. This pursuit of thought apart from himself, this changing, transforming it leads to illusion.
The thinker is his thought; the thinker and his thoughts are not two separate processes. The questioner asks if awareness is different from the object of awareness. We generally regard our thoughts as being apart from ourselves; we are not aware of the thinker and his thought as one.
This is precisely the difficulty. After all, the qualities of the self are not separate from the self; the self is not something apart from its thoughts, from its attributes. The self is put together, made up, and the self is not when the parts are dissolved.
But in illusion the self separates itself from its qualities in order to protect itself, to give itself continuity, permanency. It takes refuge in its qualities through separating itself from them. The self asserts that it is this and it is that; the self, the I, modifies, changes, transforms its thoughts, its qualities, but this change only gives strength to the self, to its protective walls.
But if you are aware deeply you will perceive that the thinker and his thoughts are one; the observer is the observed. To experience this actual integrated fact is extremely difficult and right meditation is the way to this integration. How can I be on the defence against aggression without action?
Morality demands that we should do something against evil? To defend is to be aggressive. Should you fight evil by evil?