excerpts

Please follow the operations of your own mind - not the word, not the speaker, agreeing or disagreeing with the speaker. If you watch your own conditioning - not because I tell you but because it is a fact - when you look at that fact, when you become aware of that fact, then you can proceed to dissolve that fact, that conditioning.

But first you must be aware of the fact that your mind is conditioned. When it says it is a Hindu, it is conditioned; it is shaped by the past, by centuries of culture; it is the result of a historical process and a mythological process. The religions that you have are the result of other people's experiences. Your religion is not your own direct experience; it is what you have been told either in some book or by some teacher, or by some philosopher; it is not something which you experience. It is only when your mind is completely unconditioned, that you can experience or discover if there is something real or not.

... to say that you are religious, that you are a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, or a Christian, [this] has no meaning whatsoever. That is pure romanticism which is exploited by the priest, by an organized group, political or religious, because they have a vested interest in it. These are all facts., whether you like them or not. I am merely describing the fact. These divisions into religious groups, believing in this and that, accepting this dogma and denying that dogma, going from prison to temple to temple, doing endless puja, all that is not a religious mind at all; it is merely a traditional mind bound by fear. And surely a mind that is afraid can never find out if there is, or if there is not, something beyond the word, beyond the measure of the mind…

 

Editor's note: Usually, when K uses the term "religion" he refers to a fearful, mindless dogmatism. However, unfortunately, he also uses this term in another sense. See below.

 

When I use the word 'religion', all kinds of images come to your mind; all kinds of symbols. The Christian has his own symbols, dogmas and belief. The Hindu, the Muslim, all the people who call themselves religious - they have a peculiar approach, an idiosyncratic approach. a traditional approach; so they can never think clearly about the matter. They are first Hindus or Muslims; and then they begin to seek.

So to find out if there is, or if there is not, something which is beyond thought, which is not measurable by the mind, the mind must first be free. Surely that is logic. You see, another peculiarity with religious people is that they are totally illogical. Psychologically they have no sanity. They accept without enquiry; and their enquiry is motivated by fear, by the desire for security which prevents their thought; they become romantic because it pleases them. They become devotional - it gives them a sense of joy, happiness. But that is not a religious mind at all; it is a fanciful mind; it has no reality.

If you observe your own mind, you will see how cluttered up and burdened it is with belief; and you think that belief is necessary. You use belief as a hypothesis - which is sheer nonsense. When a man is enquiring, he does not start out with a hypothesis; he has a free mind. He is not attached to any dogma and he is not bound by any fear. He starts out denying all that and then begins to seek. But you never deny for various reasons. You never deny because it would not be respectable in a respectable society - though that society is really rotten. You never deny because you might lose your job or position. You never deny because of your family; you have to marry off your daughter, your son, to do this and that. Therefore, you are bound consciously or unconsciously, through fear, to the dogma, to the tradition in which you have been brought up…

 

Editor's note: Here K seems to use "religion" in a positive sense, meaning "spirituality." 

 

The religious mind does not follow anyone. The religious mind has no authority. Authority implies imitation, authority implies conformity. And there is conformity because you want success, you want to achieve; and therefore there is fear. Without dissolving fear completely, how can you proceed to enquire, how can you proceed to find out? These are not rhetorical questions. If I am frightened, I am bound to seek comfort, shelter, security in whatever that comes along, because fear dictates - not sanity, not clarity. Fear dictates conformity, fear dictates that I must imitate, that I must follow somebody in the hope I shall find comfort.

The religious mind has no authority of any kind; and that is very difficult for people to accept, because we have been bred in authority. The Gita, the Upanishads, the Bible, the Koran and all the innumerable so-called sacred books have taken the place of our own thinking, of our own suffering; they give us comfort in illusion; they are not real at all. You make them into reality, because in them, in the dead words of others, you find comfort, in the authority of another you find light. How absurd it is really, if you examine it; and yet you are so-called-educated, sane, rational people!

Where religious matters are concerned, we become totally irrational, insane; and all these build the walls of our conditioning. Again this is a fact, a psychological, undeniable fact. You are going to the temple; you are reading the Gita and muttering a lot of words which have lost their meaning. That is not a religious mind at all.

Such reading [of sacred books], such repetition, makes the mind dull, insensitive. There is a contradiction between daily living and what you think is real. There is no living a religious life. You have divorced life from religion, you have divorced ethics from religion. And a mind that lives in this duality, in this contradiction, in this cleavage - such a mind is creating the world at the present time; it is bringing into the world more and more chaos. We see all this. Where there is confusion, where there is misery, people turn to authority, to tyranny - not only politically but also religiously. Gurus, teachers, ideas, beliefs, dogmas multiply and flourish, because we have never looked into ourselves deeply to find out for ourselves what is true.

The beginning of the religious mind is self-knowledge...

So, beginning to understand yourself as you are is the beginning of wisdom; and also the beginning of meditation is to see without distortion the fact of what you are...

So, when you observe yourself very clearly, when you are aware choicelessly of every thought, of every feeling, then you will come upon something - which is: that there is a thinker and there is the thought; that there is an experiencer, an observer, and there is the experience, the observed. This is a fact, is it not? - there is a censor, an entity which judges, evaluates, which thinks, which observes; and there is the thing which is observed…

So self-knowledge, or the learning about yourself every day, brings about psychologically, inwardly, a new mind - because you have denied the old mind. Through self-knowledge you have denied your conditioning totally. The conditioning of the mind can be denied totally only when the mind is aware of its own operations - how it works, what it thinks, what it says, what are the motives.

There is another factor involved in this. We think that it is a gradual process, that it will take time, to free the mind from conditioning. Please, follow this. We think that it will take many days or many years to uncondition our conditioned mind - which means that we will do it gradually, day after day.

What does that imply? Surely, it implies acquiring knowledge in order to dissipate this conditioning - which means that you are not learning but acquiring. A mind that is acquiring is never learning. But the mind that uses knowledge in order to arrive, in order to succeed, in order to achieve a sense of liberation - such a mind must have time. Such a mind says, 'I must have time to free myself from my conditioning' which means: it is going to acquire knowledge and as the knowledge expands, it will become freer and freer; this is utterly false.

Through time, through the multiplication of many tomorrows, there is no liberation. There is freedom only in the denial of the thing which is seen immediately…

But you cannot break down the past immediately if your mind is in the grip of knowledge which says, 'I will gradually accumulate knowledge and eventually break the conditioning'. The mind must see the conditioning immediately. For instance, if you see the absurdity of nationalism, the poison of nationalism, if you see it, if you comprehend it completely - which you can do if you give your attention to it completely - then the moment you comprehend it, you are free of nationalism; nationalism will never touch you again…

So a religious mind is a mind that has no belief, that has no dogma, that has no fear, that has absolutely no authority of any kind. It is a light to itself. Such a mind, being free, can go very far. But that freedom must begin very close, very near - which is: the freedom is in yourself, in the understanding of yourself - and then you can go very far.

Then you will find out for yourself that extraordinary stillness of the mind - it is not an idea but an actual fact. A mind that is completely still without any distraction, a still mind... a mind that is completely quiet and therefore completely alive, totally sensitive; it is only such a mind that can receive that which is immeasurable.