excerpts

A mind that is fertile, not in the invention of new ideas, does not relish or indulge in explanations as though in themselves words are a reality. The "word" is never the "thing". The word "door" is not the door; these two are entirely different things.

But most of us are satisfied with words and we think we have understood the whole structure of the universe and ourselves by words.

Semantically we can reason logically, verbally, very clearly; but that is not a fertile mind. A fertile mind is empty like the womb before it conceives; as it is empty, it is fertile, rich - which really means, it has purged itself of all the things that are not necessary for the new mind to be.

And that comes into being only when you see the urgency of having such a mind, a fertile mind without any belief, without any dogma, without any frustration and therefore without hope and despair, without the breath of sorrow which is really self-pity. Such a mind is necessary for the new mind, and that is why it is essential to enter into the field of self-knowing.

We know several people who have listened to these talks for thirty, forty years and have not gone beyond their own skins inwardly, outwardly; they are incessantly active. Such people are racketeers, exploiting and therefore very destructive people, whether they are politicians or social workers or spiritual leaders who have not really deeply, inwardly, penetrated into their own beings, which is after all the totality of life...

How superficial our life is, to be satisfied by cunning words, by words which are very cleverly put together. After all, the Upanishads, the Gita, the Bible, the Koran are just words, and to keep on repeating, quoting, explaining the same is still the continuation of the word; and apparently we are extraordinarily satisfied by these - which indicates how empty, how shallow, how easily satisfied we are by words which are ashes.

So it is absolutely essential to understand oneself. The word "understanding" has nothing to do with the word "explanation". The description is not the understanding, the verbal thing is not the understanding.

To understand something requires a mind that is capable of observing itself without distortion. I cannot understand, look at these flowers if my attention is not given to them. In attention there is no condemnation, there is no justification, no explanation or conclusion.

You observe; and such a state of observation comes into being when there is the urgency to understand, to look, to observe, to see, to perceive; then the mind strips itself of everything to observe. For most of us observation is very difficult, because we have never watched anything, neither the wife, nor the child, nor the filth on the street, nor the children smiling; we have never watched ourselves.

Now we sit, now we walk, talk, how we jabber away incessantly, how we quarrel. We are never aware of ourselves in action. We function automatically and that is how we want to function. And having established that habit, we say, "How can I observe myself without the habit?" So, we have a conflict, and to overcome the conflict we develop other forms of discipline, which are a further continuation of habits.

So, habit, discipline, the continuation of a particular idea these prevent understanding. If I want to understand a child I have to look, I have to observe, not at any given moment only but all the time, while the child is playing, crying, doing everything. I have to watch it; but the moment there is a bias I have ceased to watch.

The discovery for oneself of the biases, the prejudices, the experiences and the knowledge that prevents this observation is the beginning of self-knowledge.

Without that enquiry of self-knowledge you cannot observe. Without stripping the "I" of the glasses of prejudices and the innumerable conditionings, can you look? How can the politicians look at the universe, the world, because they are so ambitious, they are so petty, concerned with their advancement, with their country? And we too are concerned with our service, wife, position, achievements, ambitions, envies, conclusions; and with all that we say, "We must look, we must observe, we must understand." We can't understand. Understanding comes only when the mind is stripped of all these - there must be a ruthless stripping. Because, these engender sorrow, they are the seeds, the roots of sorrow; and a mind that has roots in sorrow can never have compassion...

The mind is a vast thing, it is not just a little spot in the universe, it is the whole universe; and to investigate the whole universe the mind requires an astonishing energy. That energy is greater than all the rockets because it is self-perpetuating, because it has no centre from which to move. And you cannot come by this energy unless there is real enquiry into the movement of the mind as the outer and the inner, the inner with its division as the unconscious which is the storehouse of all the racial inheritance of the family, the name, the motives, the urges, the compulsions; and that enquiry is not a process of analysis.