(Seeing without the word — the immediate and the rootless)
A fact is to be seen and the seeing is not through the word. When a fact is interpreted, it ceases to be a fact; it becomes something entirely different. The seeing is of the highest importance. This seeing is out of time-space; it’s immediate, instantaneous. And what’s seen is never the same again.There’s no again or in the meantime.
To cut all the roots, one by one, is a psychological absurdity. It cannot be done. Only the fact, loneliness, must be seen and then all other things fade away.
It was uniquely alone, not isolated but alone, like a dropof rain which holds all the waters of the earth. It was neither joyous nor sad but alone. It had no quality, shape or colour; these would make it something recognizable, measurable. It came like a flash and took seed. It did not germinate but it was there in its entirety. There was no time to mature; time has roots in the past. This was a rootless, causeless state. So it is totally “new”, a state that has not been and never will be, for it is living.
its seriousness was as lightning which destroys and burns up; the profundity of it was not measurable, it was there immovable, impenetrable, a solidity that was as light as the heavens.
It was there imperishable, unnameable, the unknowing. No thought could ever penetrate it; no action could ever touch it. It was “pure”, untouched and so ever dyingly beautiful.
(Non-becoming, non-experiencing, and the additive mind)
to “see” the depth of non-being, there must be freedom from becoming. There is no freedom if there is continuity and that which has continuity is time-bound. Every experience is binding thought to time and a mind that’s in a state of non-experiencing is aware of all essence. This state in which all experiencing has come to an end is not the paralysis of the mind; on the contrary, it is the additive mind, the mind that is accumulating, that is witheringaway. For accumulation is mechanical, a repetition; the denial to acquire and mere acquisition are both repetitive and imitative. The mind that destroys totally this accumulative and defensive mechanism is free and so experiencing has lost its significance.
There is no end to depth; the essence of it is without time and space. Its not to be experienced; experience is such a tawdry thing, so easily got and so easily gone; thought cannot put it together nor can feeling make its way to it. These are silly and immature things. Maturity is not of time, a matter of age, nor does it come through influence and environment.
(Austerity, brain sensitivity, and the feel of essence)
But this austerity comes when the brain remains clear, undamaged by any psychological wounds that are caused through fear; conflict in any form destroys the sensitivity of the brain; ambition with its ruthlessness, with its ceaseless effort to become, wears down the subtle capacities of the brain; greed and envy make the brain heavy with content and weary with discontent. There must be alertness, without choice, an awareness in which all receiving and adjustment have ceased. Overeating and indulgence in any form makes the body dull and stupefies the brain.
The word to feel is misleading; it’s more than emotion, than a sentiment, than an experience, than touch or smell.Though that word is apt to be misleading, it must be used to communicate and especially so when we are talking of essence. The feel of essence is not through the brain nor through some fancy; its not experienceable as a shock; above all it’s not the word.You cannot experience it; to experience there must be an experiencer, the observer. Experiencing, without the experiencer, is quite another matter. It is in this “state”, in which there is no experiencer, no observer, that there is that “feeling”. It is not intuition, which the observer interprets or follows, blindly or with reason; it is not the desire, longing, transformed into intuition or the “voice of God” evoked by politicians and religio-social reformers. It’s necessary to get away from all this, far away to understand this feeling, this seeing, this listening. To “feel” demands the austerity of clarity, in which there is no confusion and conflict.The
to pursue to the very end, without any deviation, sorrow, envy, fear, ambition and so on. This simplicity is beyond the capacity of the intellect; intellect is fragmentary.
It was there, the very essence of death.The essence of self is death but this death was the very essence of life as well. In fact they were not separate, life and death. This was not something conjured up by the brain for its comfort and ideational security. The very living was the dying and dying was living. In that car, with all that beauty and colour, with that “feeling” of ecstasy, death was part of love, part of everything.
There must be silence for the explosion of creation.
(Maturity, learning, and thought’s structural limits)
Maturity is not of time and age. There is no interval between now and maturity; there is never “in the meantime”. Maturity is that state when all choice has ceased; it’s only the immature that choose and know the conflict of choice. In maturity there’s no direction but there’s a direction which is not a direction of choice. Conflict at any level, at any depth, indicates immaturity. There’s no such thing as becoming mature, except organically, the mechanicalinevitability of certain things to ripen. The understanding, which is the transcending of conflict, in all its complex varieties, is maturity.
There’s no understanding in time. Understanding does not come tomorrow; it will never come tomorrow; it is now or never; there’s only now and there’s no never. The “seeing” is immediate;
Learning is the immediate seeing which is not in time. All accumulation and knowledge are measurable.
Seeing is always instantaneous, as understanding, and the brain which is put together by time, prevents and also perverts seeing.
Thought is memory and memory is accumulated responses and so thought is always conditioned however much it may imagine it is free. Thought is mechanical, tiedto the centre of its own knowledge.
Thought cannot go beyond itself, it may function in narrow or wide fields but it will always be within the limitations of memory and memory is always limited. Memory must die psychologically, inwardly, but function only outwardly. Inwardly, there must be death and outwardly sensitivity to…
Thought is always fragmentary and what it holds is always partial, as memory. It cannot observe the whole; the part cannot see the whole and the imprint of benediction is non-verbal and non-communicable through words, through any symbol. Thought will always fail in its attempt to discover, to experience that which is beyond time and space. The brain, the machinery of thought can be quiet;the very active brain can be quiet; its machinery can run very slowly. The quietness of the brain, though intensely sensitive, is essential; then only can thought disentangle itself and come to an end. The ending…
What is sought must already be known and what is known is…
Conflict, in every form, must cease and then perhaps it is there. There must be total negation, the cessation of demand and need; then only does conflict come to an end. In emptiness there is birth. All the inward structure of resistance and security must die away; then only is there emptiness. Only in this emptiness is there peace whose virtue has no value nor profit.It was there early in the morning, it came with the sun in a clear, opaque sky; it was a marvellous thing full of beauty, a benediction that asked nothing, no sacrifice, no…
Intelligence is sensitive…
Ignorance is not the lack of knowledge but of self-knowing; without self-knowing there is no intelligence. Self-knowing is not accumulative as knowledge; learning is from moment to moment. It is not an additive process; in the process of gathering,…
All description of it is of no significancefor the word can never cover the immensity nor the beauty of it. Everything ceases when that is, and strangely the brain with all its responses and activities, finds itself suddenly and voluntarily quiet, without a single response, without a single memory nor is there any recording of what is going on. It is very Winch alive but utterly quiet. It is too innuense for any imagination, which is rather immature and…
(Desire, nothingness, and the flame that burns without torture)
Fulfilment and self importance, in the name of one’s country or party or because of some gratifying belief, are escapes from the factof one’s own nothingness, emptiness, loneliness, of one’s own self-isolating activities. The inward needs which seem to have no end multiply, change and continue. This is the source of contradictory and burning desire.Desire is always there; the objects of desire change, diminish or multiply but it is always there. Controlled, tortured, denied, accepted, suppressed, allowed to run freely or cut off, it is always there, feeble or strong. What is wrong with…
With the total understanding of need, not the mere quantity or the quality of it, desire then is a flame and not a torture. Without this flame life itself is lost. It is this flame that burns away the pettiness of its object, the frontiers, the fences that have been imposed upon it. Then call it by…
There’s a “thinking” born out of the total emptiness of the mind; that emptiness has no centre and so is capable of infinite movement. Creation is born out of this emptiness but it is not the creation of man putting…
(Fear, inattention, and the emptying of consciousness)
There is fear. Fear is never an actuality; it is either before or after the active present. When there is fear in the active present, is it fear? It is there and there is no escape from it, no evasion possible. There, at that actual moment, there is total attention at the moment of danger, physical or psychological. When there is complete attention there is no fear. But the actual fact of inattention breeds fear; fear arises when there is an avoidance of the fact, a flight; then the veryescape itself is fear.Fear and its many forms, guilt, anxiety, hope, despair, is there in every movement of relationship; it is there in every search for security; it is there in so-called love and worship; it is there in ambition and success; it is there in life and in death; it is there in physical things and in psychological factors. There is fear in so many forms and at all the levels of our consciousness. Defence,…
When there is complete attention there is no fear. But the actual fact of inattention breeds fear; fear arises when there is an avoidance of the fact, a flight; then the veryescape itself is fear.Fear and its many forms, guilt, anxiety, hope, despair, is there in every movement of relationship; it is there in every search for security; it is there in so-called love and worship; it is there in ambition and success; it is there in life and in death; it is there in physical things and in psychological factors. There is fear in so many forms and at all the levels of our consciousness.
Thought itself is the source of fear. Thought is time; thought of tomorrow is pleasure or pain; if it’s pleasurable,thought will pursue it, fearing its end; if it’s painful, the very avoidance of it is fear. Both pleasure and pain…
And when fear ceases, then the power to breed illusion, myth, visions, with their hope and despair also ceases, and then only begins a movement of going beyond consciousness, which is thought and feeling. It is the emptying of the innermost recesses and deep hidden wants and desires. Then when there is this total emptiness, when there is absolutely and literallynothing, no influence, no value, no…
Attention is not concentration which is narrowing, limiting. Total attention…
There was no time; every movement had stopped but there was nothing static. On the contrary there was an extraordinary intensity and sensitivity, a fire that was burning, without heat and colour.
(Meditation as destruction — aloneness and the innocent mind)
Meditation caught in a method, in a system of rewards and promises, cripples and tames energy. Meditation is the freeing of energy in abundance, and control, discipline and suppression spoil the purity of that energy. Meditation is the flame burning intensely without leaving any ashes. Words, feeling, thought, always leave ashes and to live on ashes is the way of the world. Meditation is danger for it destroys everything, nothing whatsoever is left, not even a whisper of desire, and in this vast, unfathomable emptiness there is creation and love.
To deny is to be alone; alone from all influence, tradition and from need, with its dependence and attachment. To be alone is to deny the conditioning, the background. The frame in which consciousness exists and has its being is its conditioning; to be choicelessly aware of this conditioning and the total denial of it is to be alone. This aloneness is not isolation, loneliness, self-enclosing occupation. Aloneness is not withdrawal from life; on the contrary it is the total freedom from conflict and sorrow, from fear and death. This aloneness is the imitation of consciousness; complete transformation of what has been. This aloneness is emptiness, it is not the positive state of being, nor the not being. It is emptiness; in this fire of emptiness the mind is made young, fresh and innocent. It is innocency alone that can receive the timeless, the new which is ever destroying itself. Destruction is creation. Without love, there is no destruction.