excerpts

How can one free the mind, and yet live in this world with all its techniques, knowledge, experiences? I think this is the problem, the central issue, not only in this country, but in India, in Europe, and all over the world.

a state of mind which is creation itself

We are not creative, we are becoming mechanical. I do not mean by creativeness merely writing a poem, or painting a picture, or inventing a new thing. Those are merely the capacities of a talented mind. I mean a state which is creation itself.

So, to me the central problem is freedom. Freedom is not from something; that is only a reaction. Freedom, I feel, is something entirely different. If I'm free from fear, that is one thing. The freedom from fear is a reaction, which only brings about a certain courage. But I'm talking of freedom which is not from something, which is not a reaction; and that requires a great deal of understanding.

I am not your teacher, so you are not my followers. The moment you follow, you are bound, you are not free. If you accept any theory, you are bound by that theory; if you practise any system, however complicated, however ancient or modern it may be, you are a slave to that system.

Reality, or that which is not expressible in words, cannot be found by a mind that is clogged, weighed down. There is, I think, a state, call it what you will, which is not the experience of any saint, of any seeker, of any person who is endeavouring to find it; because all experience is really a perpetuation of the past. Experience only strengthens the past; therefore experience does not free the mind.

The freeing element is the state of the mind that is capable of experiencing without the entity who experiences. This again requires a certain explanation, and we shall go into it in the coming talks.

To bring about this freedom, there must be self-knowledge: knowing the way you think, and discovering in that process the whole structure of the mind.

You know, fact is one thing, and symbol is another; the word is one thing, and what the word represents is another. For most of us, the symbol - the symbol of the flag, the symbol of the cross - has become extraordinarily important, so we live by symbols, by words; but the word, the symbol is never important. And to break down the word, the symbol, to go behind it, is an astonishingly difficult task.

To free the mind from the words you are an American, you are a Catholic, you are a democrat, or a Russian, or a Hindu, is very arduous. And yet, if we would inquire into what is freedom, we must break down the symbol, the word. The frontier of the mind is laid down by our education, by the acceptance of the culture in which we have been brought up, by the technology which is part of our heritage; and to penetrate all these layers that condition our thinking, requires a very alert, intense mind.

we need a mind that can face its own loneliness

What we need is a very clear mind - a mind that is not afraid to investigate, a mind that is capable of being alone, that can face its own loneliness, its own emptiness, a mind that is capable of destroying itself to find out.

So, I would point out to all of you the importance of being really serious; you are not coming to these talks for entertainment, or out of curiosity, or just because I happen to have come back after five years. All that is a waste of time. There is something much deeper, wider, which we have to discover for ourselves: how to go beyond the limitations of our own [culture-conditioned] consciousness.

Because all consciousness is a limitation; and all change within consciousness is no change at all. And I think it is possible ... to go beyond the frontiers which the mind has laid down. But one can do that only when one is capable of investigating the quality of the mind and having really profound knowledge of oneself. Without knowing yourself, you cannot go far, because you will get lost in an illusion, you will escape into fanciful ideas, into some new form of sectarianism.

It is only in freedom that we can discover; it is only in freedom that there can be the creative mind; it is only when the mind is free that there is endless energy - and it is this energy that is the movement of reality.

To conclude this first talk, I would suggest that, until we meet tomorrow morning, you consider, observe, and be[come] aware of the enslavement of your own mind.

This first talk is merely an outline of the contents of the book; and if you are content with the outline, with the headlines, with a few ideas, then I'm afraid you will not go very far. It is not a matter of acceptance or denial, but rather of inquiry into yourself - which does not demand any form of authority.

On the contrary, it demands that you should follow nobody, that you should be a light unto yourself; and you cannot be a light unto yourself if you are committed to any particular mode of conduct, to any form of activity which has been laid down as being respectable, as being religious.

One must begin very near to go very far; and one cannot go very far if one does not know oneself. The knowing of oneself does not depend on any analyst. One can observe oneself as one goes along in every form of relationship, every day; and without that understanding, the mind can never be free.