excerpts

we're always trying to become something

Effort is the state of a mind, of a heart that is in conflict with itself, because it is everlastingly struggling to become something.

Where is the state of mind which is not contaminated by the old [ie, the past]? Where is there innocency which is not a mere denial or intellectual formula [ie, a reliance on authority]? Where is there a mind which has been through this whole process, which has travelled through all these fields of limitation, and which knows what it is to be creative in the ultimate sense of that word? Creativity is not painting pictures, or writing poems - I don't mean that. I am referring to that state of creation which is energy without a beginning and without an end, which does not demand an expression, which [simply] is.

We ever search for rest for the mind, to find the answer, to achieve that state. We believe the answer is ‘out there’ and so we search. We strive to achieve that better state. But we can’t search for, we can’t achieve this – because none of it is ‘out there’ but deep within. Success for us is not working to achieve but opening the eyes to what we already have.

You must have asked yourself all these questions. But you always want to find an answer, you want to achieve that state; so you are putting a wrong question, and inevitably you will have a wrong answer. You can't achieve that state. Do what you will: go to all the monasteries, read all the books, attend all the talks, including these, seek out every teacher - you can never achieve that state of creation. It can come into being only when you have understood or felt out all the dark recesses of your own mind, so that the mind is completely still and not demanding anything.

Don't you see what you are doing within yourself, and therefore outwardly too? You are seeking a state of mind in which you will be capable of understanding, in which you will have no problem; you want to be in a perpetual state of ecstasy, where you will know what love is, and all the rest of it. You are always asking. Your problems are known, and your answers are also known; therefore you have created a picture, a symbol of what you should or should not be.

You know, when you suddenly see something extraordinarily beautiful - a mountain, a stream in the shade of a tree, or the face of a child - your whole being becomes quiet, does it not? You don't say, "Why is it so beautiful?" Your mind, your whole being is, for a moment at least, completely still, because there is no answer. But that is merely an imposition. The beauty of something has momentarily knocked out your mind. It is like depending on a drug to make you quiet, taking LSD so that you will have marvellous visions.

What we are talking about has no [external] answer; so we have only the crisis, without the answer. But you have never faced the crisis in those terms. You have never lived in that crisis without seeking an answer because there is no answer. The fields of the known may be traversed in one swift perception, or it may take many years to cross the fields of the known.

But when you have come to that point where you are really faced with the crisis which has no answer, and the mind is silent with a silence that is not imposed, then you will see, if you have the patience, that there is a revolution - a tremendous revolution in which the mind is made innocent through death of the known; and only such a mind can discover that which is everlasting.