excerpts

When you say you are seeking God, it means you already know what God is or else your conditioning has projected the idea that there is a God. So, thinking compels you to seek that which thought itself has projected.

Editor's note: The discussion herein also applies to finding one's eternal mate - we don't know what we're looking for.

Thought, which is superficial, thought, the result of many experiences which have been gathered and which form your background - from that thought you project an idea and then you seek it! And in your search for God you have visions, you have experiences which only strengthen the search and urge you on to follow the projections of your background.

One is in conflict, in turmoil, and in order to escape from that turmoil thought begins to project an idea that there must be peace, that there must be permanent bliss, and then it proceeds to seek it. One does not understand this miserable existence, this everlasting chaos and one wants to escape to a permanent state of bliss.

Now that state is projected by the mind, and having projected it thought says: "I must find help to get to it". And so follows the methods, the system, the practice. Thought creates the problem and then tries to escape from the problem through various systems in order to reach the projected idea of a permanent state. So, thought pursues its own projection, its own shadow.

Now, the question is, really, can the mind suspend thinking and face everyday experience from a different quality of mind? This does not mean to forget or neglect collected memory, collected experience. Technicians, bridge-builders, scientists, clerks and so on are, of course, needed, but is it possible, realizing that thinking is not the solution to our problems, to suspend thought and observe the problem?

I do not know if you have ever tried really to look at a problem without the agitation, the turmoil, the restlessness of thought? Thinking creates a series of motions of restlessness, of anxiety, of demand for a solution, and have you ever tried to sink thought, to suspend thinking and just observe the problem?

Let me put it differently. It seems that whatever man can do, an appropriate electronic machine can do also. It is being discovered, and will be perfected in a decade or two, that what a human mind can do, the machine can do also and quite efficiently. It will probably compose, write poems, translate books, and so on. And chemically they are making drugs to give comfort, peace, freedom from worry, tranquillization.

So you understand, Sirs, what is going to happen? Is the machine to take over your work and probably do it better, and is the drug to give you peace or mind. If there are certain drugs you can take to make your mind extraordinarily quiet so that you won't have to go through disciplines, controls, breathing exercises and all those tricks.

So the petty mind, the shallow mind, the limited mind, which only thinks an inch from itself, will have no more worries, it will have peace. But such a mind is still petty, its frontiers are recognizable and all its thoughts are shallow. Though it is very quiet through taking pills, it has not broken down its own limitations, has it?

A petty mind thinking about God, going from one graven image to another, uttering a lot of words, murmuring a lot of prayers, is still a petty mind. And that is the case with most of us.

So how can thought, which is always superficial, always petty, always limited, how can that thought be suspended so that there is no frontier at all? so that there is freedom - but not the freedom from something or the freedom to be something.

You see, one can forever improve oneself - one can think a little more, apply oneself to self-improvement, be more kind, more generous, this or that, but it is always within the field of the self, the `me'. It is the `me' that is achieving, becoming, and that `me' is always recognizable as a collection of experiences, memories.

And the problem is how to resolve, to break down, the frontiers of the `me'. When I say `how', I do not imply a method but an enquiry. Because all methods involve the functioning of thought, the control of thought, the substitution of one thought for another. So when you merely have methods, systems, disciplines, there is no enquiry.

Seeing all this, that thought is the result of memory, of collected experience which is very limited, and that the seeking of Reality, God, Truth, Perfection, Beauty is really the projection of thought - in conflict with the present and going towards an idea of the future - and seeing that the pursuit of the future creates time; seeing all this, surely it is obvious that thought must be suspended.

There must be something, surely, which thought cannot capture and put into memory, something totally new, completely unknowable, unrecognizable? And how are you, with the restlessness of your thought, to understand that state?

Is understanding a matter of time? Will you understand this tomorrow, by thinking about it? You know how, if you have a problem, thought investigates it, analyzes it, tears it to pieces, goes into it as much as it can, and still has no answer, because it is always with the anxiety of the problem. Then it gives it up, lays it in abeyance, and because thought has dissociated itself from the problem so that the problem is no longer pressing on the mind, consciously or unconsciously, then the answer comes.

So can we not see through this whole business of thinking? You know how you worship the intellectual man who is full of knowledge, which is nothing but words and ideas, but who is still living on the superficial level. Have you observed how instinctively you are attracted to a man who says, `I know'? So, seeing all this, the question is, can thought be suspended?

There is the problem of death, the problem of God, of virtue, of relationship; there is the problem of the conflict we are in, the job, the lack of money; there is the problem of poverty, starvation, and the whole misery of despair and hope.

You cannot solve these problems one by one; it is impossible. You have to solve them totally, as a whole thing, not little by little; otherwise you will never solve them. Because in solving one problem as though it were dissociated from the others you merely create another problem. No problem is separate, isolated. Every problem is related to another problem, superficially or deeply, so you have to comprehend it totally.

And thought can never comprehend it totally because thought is partial, is fragmentary. So how is the mind to solve the problem? You cannot solve it as though it were isolated; you cannot find a solution through an intellectual abstraction; you cannot solve it through accumulated memories; you cannot solve it by escaping to the temple, or to alcohol, or to sex, or anything else. It must be comprehended totally, understood totally, and this can happen only when there is the suspension of thought.

When the mind is motionless and still, the reflection of the problem on the mind is entirely different. When the lake is very quiet you can see the depth of it, you can see every fish, every weed, every flutter; similarly when the mind is completely motionless one can see very, very clearly. This can only take place when there is a suspension of thought, not in order to resolve the problem, but to see its significance, its fragmentary nature; and then thought of itself becomes quiet, motionless, not only at the conscious level but profoundly.

That is why self-knowledge is essential, why it is essential to learn about yourself. And you cannot learn about yourself if you do not look, or if you look with a mind that is full of accumulated knowledge. To learn, you must be free. Then you can look at the problem not merely from the surface; then every issue, every challenge is responded to from a depth which thought cannot reach.

A motionless mind, a still mind, is not decayed, dead, corrupt as is the mind which has been made still by a drug, by breathing, or by any system of self-hypnosis.

It is a mind that is fully alive; every untrodden region of itself is lighted up, and from that centre of light it responds, - and it does not create a shadow.