The Looking Glass: Language as Mirror

by Fred Davis

Notice that you are already awake. 

Right now, this moment, the only reason you can read these words is that you're awake. You're already awake. You're as awake as it gets. You're already fully awake.

 

Given that you're already fully awake, how then could you wake up further? Since you're already awake, does that idea even make sense? You can't wake up more from where you are right now. And you can't wake up again.

 

If you want to read a book through that body, or watch a video, or send it to a retreat for further clarity or to get some context that has the potential to open to the door to further clarity, that's great. But before you do, notice that you don't need to read another book, watch a video, or go to a retreat in order to wake up, because you're already awake. 

 

If you want to do meditation, drum, dance, chant, or what have you, for the sake of grounding yourself in that present human experience you're having, or calming that unit's mind so that you can better hear yourself talk to yourself, and better watch yourself dance for yourself, terrific. Have at it. But, be absolutely aware that you can't practice yourself into awakening. You can't achieve what you already are.

 

You're just not who you think you are; that's the only issue here. You're undergoing a case of mistaken identity, and all you need today is a little light reflected from this mirror, this mirror of clear language that is also you. There is only you, but you tend to get a bit cloudy sometimes, and forget that. It comes with the territory when your spaciousness contracts around human beings, and it's no big deal. It's fine. When you're ready to be clear you find a bright mirror, so here you are, back in front of the vanity mirror.

Vanity, vanity, all is vanity! This is all you, every bit of it--you dancing for you, you preening for you, just you showing off for yourself, to yourself and loving it.

You think you're the human being reading these words. 

You're not. Well, you actually are that human also, but you're not that person exclusively. You're the awareness that's reading these words through that human being. The human is not reading the words; you are. The human is a reading tool for you just as reading glasses are a tool for the human. Reading glasses never mistake themselves for being the reader; humans almost always do. 

 

You think you need to wake up. You don't. All that has to occur is for you to recognize yourself as what you are. "Awaken" makes it sound like something really new and different needs to happen. It doesn't. Recognition, on the other hand, is simply about noticing what already is. See how much lighter the idea of recognition is versus the idea of waking up? Why make it hard on yourself, when you're clearing longing to see/be your true nature again.

 

Be easy on yourself. How much effort does it take for that human to recognize itself in a mirror? None. The same is true for you. You just have to be willing to look in the mirror and see the reflection instead of the projection.

~ ~ ~

Read the rest of Fred's article here:

http://awakeningcla rity.blogspot. ca/2013/03/ the-looking- glass-language- as-mirror. html

Dharamsala by Dean Henderson

(excerpted from Chapter 7: Trekking with God: The Grateful Unrich: Revolution in 50 Countries)

 

As a butterfly lost in a flower. As a bird settled in a tree. As a child fondling mother’s breast. For 67 years of this world I have played with God - Sasaki Roshi

In search of a hotel, I wander down a side street and notice a sign that says “Tibetan Guest House”. I walk up a narrow staircase and a pudgy 14-year-old girl comes to the door. Her pleasant demeanor captures my imagination. She and her six brothers and sisters are huddled around a television watching Bill Cosby. I take a room.

The girl brings me a huge bowl of vegetables and noodles with chopsticks, followed by the best coffee I’ve had in India. Her little brother climbs up on a chair, grabs of pack of Four Square cigarettes from atop the refrigerator and offers me one. Their mother brings me a soda. Their father walks in with fluorescent bulbs for the whole house, as if my arrival has brought them spirited rejuvenation. The kids surround him and wait for their turn at a hug. Some are content with a pat on the head. These are people who know intimately the secrets to happiness. I need to stay awhile.

I wonder if praise is not one of our biggest mistakes. When an Ituri Pygmy hunter comes home from having killed a springbuck, he gets no praise from his fellow tribesmen and is the last to receive his portion of meat. Out of this silence the hunter learns humility. He learns that his fate and that of his tribe are one. Praise for his efforts would only create a schism of the whole and fill the hunter with arrogance. In America, when one praises a friend exceedingly, that friend often begins to mistreat his or her admirer. To praise someone is to put them on a pedestal – separate from the masses of un-praised others. It is a product of dualistic thinking athe root of scores of flawed Western philosophical underpinnings.

This conundrum may explain why I always feel that I need to leave America where I treat everyone as if they are intrinsically good. Westerners, trained in dualistic thinking, take this as weakness on my part. They see my kindness as a green light to take, to gain some emotional advantage. I do not find such a dilemma in India or for that matter any other Third World nations I have visited. Here kindness is greeted by reciprocation.

I guess Reagan and his supply-siders are right in one sense about their trickle-down theories. An evil government imparts its paranoid set of values to its citizenry, whose collective denial of a bloody colonial history only reinforces the “taker” mindset. To stop and question the rules of this rigged game would be to risk losing one’s television or VCR or, God forbid, one’s cherished automobile. Westerners live in a state of guilt, shame and fear – knowing in their guts, but never acknowledging, the trail of tears they have left in their wake. Their penance is their work, their half-hearted daily grind, their boring monotonous meaningless assignment from the cruel Great White teacher. Their weekends are spent indulging in a swirl of contradictions that, by gosh, they deserve after spending all week doing penance. They break out their speedboats, gorge at fine restaurants, guzzle copious amounts of alcohol and throw their hard-earned money back into the whirling cogs of the system. They do not deserve freedom. They must repent. They are the system.

No one’s heart is sad at birth. No one is filled with gloom when their tiny eyes first awaken to the world outside their mother’s womb. No amount of phony social Darwinist propaganda can make it so. Charles Darwin, whose “survival of the fittest” terminology is often invoked by wealthy fat Republicans as justification for their callous journey through this life, actually argued that the most important key to human and animal survival was “cooperation within species”. The entire debate over whether man is naturally good or evil is itself a dualistic windstorm that could only take place within the simplistic minds of the colonial West.

Surely man has the ability to do both good and evil. He must choose which path to embark upon – one of fear and greed, or one of love and compassion. Yet his circumstances greatly influence the nature of his soul. His environment plays a much greater role than his DNA. Most pit bulls are socialized to be family protectors or worse – stone cold killers. But some pit bulls are not instructed so, and are as gentle as lambs. A grizzly bear in Kodiak, Alaska – well-fed on salmon and unused to human interaction – is much less likely to maul a person than one in Yellowstone National Park, where his habitat is a tiny island of government protection and where ignorant humans are constantly pestering him for photographs.

While the Aryans have a lock on colonization, there were rapists among the Zulu and murderers among the Lakota. These bad apples likely were impacted by negative events in their childhood and the like. But Aryan history books exaggerate these anomalies in an attempt to justify colonial endeavors. Tribal peoples treated their offenders much more compassionately. Wrongdoers in tribal cultures were shunned and sent away for a period of time. Wrongdoers in colonial cultures are executed, upsetting the cosmic balance and reinforcing the dualistic thinking that alienates industrialized man from both earth and other cultures. We can kill criminals because we believe in the dualism that they are the bad people and we the good. The fact that tribal cultures did not kill their criminals speaks volumes to their humility, to their lack of dualism-driven fear and to their earth-inspired wisdom. By all accounts the shunning of offenders worked. Recidivism among Lakota offenders was virtually non-existent. The person knew he did wrong, but he also discovered that his life was too valuable to be taken. Thus, the value of all life was reinforced in both his mind and in the collective mind of the culture.

Modern-day prisoners in South Africa, Israel, the US or China – all subject to death at the whim of their governments – hold no such respect for human life. Nor do the people who live in those countries. The nature of human existence holds no relevance in arguments for or against the death penalty. Nor does it matter in any discussion of social policy. Our decision is one of which path we shall take from right here and now. Will we choose a path of darkness and nihilism, or will we choose one that restores balance and harmony to earth and its inhabitants? When we feel good about who we are we do good things. Happiness and justice are two results of harmony – one and the same thing.

McLeod Ganje sits above Dharamsala, which is perched at 6,400’ above sea level. McLeod is a refuge for Tibetans who fled their homes following the 1949 Chinese Revolution. Their spiritual leader the Dalai Lama led them to this new mountain home, also a refuge for travelers to India who grow weary of the hot crowded hassle-ridden lowlands. Here there is much compassion and deafening silence, echoing cheerfully off snow-capped peaks.

Today the 14th Dalai Lama speaks at a three-day celebration of Tibetan culture. His presence is gentle power to an open heart. His message is compassion, which is the central tenet of Tibetan Buddhism. This ideal emerged from the philosophies of Ghautama Buddha, who centuries earlier in northern India, recognized that of all the values revered in his native Hinduism, compassion was the only one that really mattered. The Dalai Lama does not blame the invasion by Chairman Mao’s Red Army for his people’s tribulations. He attributes the act to the karma of the Tibetan people themselves. He discourages divisive language of any kind since it creates a reality where dualistic thought becomes the paradigm. Without duality there can be no enemies. He encourages compassionate living as the path to good karma and nirvana. To en-courage is to be courageous. To dis-courage is cowardice.

This tiny village is living peace – heaven on earth. I have not seen a happier, more content or more compassionate people. I feel it in the simple gourmet food, in the sparse spotless hotel rooms that you pay for when you leave, in the suddenly smiling Westerners taken aback by the joy of the place, and in the Himalayan foothills that surround the village and remind me of my smallness – peaks now shrouded in gray-white billowy clouds through which even more remote villages come into view. This evening the sound of Tibetan gongs mingles with the chattering of rhesus monkeys and macaques playing in the surrounding forest. The few cars here carry Indian tourists back down the mountain, leaving in their wake a silence so profound that I feel every dry swallow and breath of air. The sun lays itself to rest over the Changra Valley and the gentle hand of the Buddha blankets McLeod Ganje in starry darkness.

After my usual breakfast of lemon curd cake and mint tea at the Toepa Restaurant, I begin my ascent towards the Tibetan children’s village, where a festival is in its second day. I pass dancing monks in outrageous costumes and a monastery where young monks debate with the fire of Fidel Castro. I can’t stop walking. Soon I arrive at Dal Lake. I turn left on a road heading up into the Daula Dar range. I pass through the village of Niddi, where Gadi nomadic herder girls tend their sheep and goats. At the next village of Talanu the pavement ends. I take a narrow winding dirt path around the side of a majestic mountain and suddenly, I am struck with awe.

To read more, CLICK HERE.

Meditation Talk by Avtar - Eden Atenas, Costa Rica

My friend Avtar leads weekly meditations from our digs in Atenas, Costa Rica. This is the first attempt to record and share his latest communique. To learn more about what's up in Costa Rica, check out the web site HERE, Facebook HERE, and Avtar's blog HERE.

Dreamwalker-Santa Muerte: All That Matters is Not Gold

dreamwalkerdiaries.blogspot.com

This is Santa Muerte, otherwise known as the Angel of Death.

There is a criticism that as a remover of barriers I may at times remove too many barriers between the subject and the objective.

My response to this has been that whatever barriers you might see before you are simply illusions to the objective that you wish to achieve.

So for those who are not so good at “delayed gratification” know that their expectations are not unreasonable. It is possible to have everything you desire NOW.  It is only your own creation of those barriers that prevents instant gratification of all that you desire.

It is to some degree (to a large degree) a product of a linear mind. You feel that you need to deal with things one at a time, so you place before you / between you and the objective, barriers to manage the flow of information your brain needs to deal with.

But your heart exists in every possibility as a multidimensional organ. This is why sometimes you hear the suggestion that the heart can handle what the head cannot. The heart can handle everything that is thrown at it, it is the brain that needs to take information and events in little pieces. By knowing this it is possible to allow the focus of the mind to see what it needs to see and not be bothered by the fact that the heart is taking in so much more of the whole. This is becoming whole-hearted.

So how is the mind trained to stop focusing / requiring linear events?

The answer to this lies in the philosopher’s stone. It is a stone that philosophers use. This is important because it is not a stone that is used by someone who builds things, or by someone who manages money, or by someone who wants to turn lead into gold! It is used by someone who wishes to know how to think with their heart.

When you are given a philosopher’s stone, you might be disappointed to learn that it is nothing more than a clear faceted gem. You are encouraged to look through it, and see not the gem or the gem’s facets, but the world around you. What do you see? Probably not very much, but you become aware that there are multiple views of the same thing. It is after all the reflection of the world that a diviner sees when scrying a water vessel (bowl). And then when one removes the crystal it is possible to continue to see every aspect of the world in this manner. In the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy might have been given emerald glasses to view the emerald city. But perhaps by donning those glasses she was in fact able to see the path to defeat the evil witch. The two events are not unrelated, but a critical part of the story often left out of the final telling. [I also hear "Agartha", in that there is a key to how it is revealed here.]

So how does this relate to the process of alchemy? Alchemy is transmutation, which is changing “matter” from one form to another. So what matters to you? And how much can you change what doesn’t matter into what does matter? That is an interesting question and key to the process of changing lead to gold. Is changing lead to gold really what matters to you at this time? What matters more? By analyzing these questions you might find that you have higher priorities.  So the philosopher’s stone (that which you hold now in your heart) tends to transform matter into that which matters. If you pay attention to your timeline you will see that this is true in every case. This can be a difficult thing for the mind to deal with because what matters in the heart and what matters in the mind are not always the same thing. When they become the same, you have unlocked the secret of the philosopher’s stone.

Mastery of the Expanded Self

By Chris Bourne

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

To truly realize the depth and majesty of our expanded self, we have to master the direct confrontation of the moment. It’s all about performing inner alchemy. There’s essentially two forms of consciousness that make up our existential being: the separation consciousness that forms the bodymind, and the unity consciousness that forms the soul. If you include various disruptive energies of society’s matrix, everything we experience from thoughts, to emotions and feelings are caused by the interaction of these various flows of consciousness. How might ‘we’ – as presence – be able to positively influence the internal dynamic?…

Creating Your Own Reality?

Some speak of shaping the thoughts in order to master beingness, but to me, this is simply a case of the tail wagging the dog. The same goes for ‘creating your own reality’. Sure, we do create our own reality, but what do we mean exactly by ‘our’? In most cases the identity doing the manifestation is just a more subtle form of ego – a spiritual identity – that wants to control the situation in some particular way because it cannot accept what is already unfolding.

We are already shaping and creating everything we experience. Either the true self - the soul - is shining through and creating harmonious experiences or else the false self is influencing the show, by resistance to what’s currently happening, denial or just plain insensitivity. We might feel a creative impulse for something to happen, only for the flow to get derailed by internal eddy currents of life’s conditioning.

In which case you can’t simply ‘paper over the cracks’, by manipulating the outer pieces on the game board without first uncovering and unwinding what’s really happening inside. To do so, is simply to perpetuate the disharmony through our lives. Even though the circumstances may change – our jobs, relationships or location – the patterns remain the same. Instead, we need to look deeply into the outer mirror we’re already creating. This includes our most intense and intimate feelings towards it, no matter how challenging or painful. Then there’s a requirement to notice the blind spots, the grey areas in these points of attachment where presence closes down and gets drawn into the fray through identification.

Grasping the Hot Coals

The only way out is through. We have to feel the fullness of these retractions from the moment. You have to grasp the hot coals and feel the heat before you drop them. If you retract in the face of the heat or the pain or the heartache, be it emotional, physical or mental, then in that moment, you have reconfirmed your identification with the heat and with that your separation from the all that is. You have made yourself a victim of the sense of separation and crystalised that as your reality.

The key is transcendence: feeling through the heat of the moment until the coals define you no longer. You become the heat, the pain, the tension, the discomfort and soften into it. You become so totally at-one with it, that you no longer build internal references, structures and judgments around the situations. It is in these totally lucid moments you become absolutely authentic and free. You have transcended the limitation of identification and dropped into the void of infinite potential. From here, anything can happen. The authentic flow of the soul ignites, fueled by the unstoppable force of the universe.

To master such transcendence is to increase our inner intimacy – to bring absolute attention into our bodily field, to know when we retract, resist and deny. Bringing presence into these blind spots automatically begins to unwind them, liberating the soul as a free flowing spontaneity through the moment. There is nothing that feels better, more harmonious or complete. This is truly living.

The Path to Bodhidharma

It is the Openhand Approach to life and I’ve found it very aligned with some of the ancient eastern teachings such as that of the monk Bodhidharma. I came across his work some years ago through a lovely synchronicity and felt to share a glimpse here…

In the old days in China there was a priest called Master Tozan. A monk asked him “how can we escape from this severe heat and cold?” This is not just a question about severe heat and cold. It is a question about the reality we are always facing – a melancholy and difficult reality, a reality that is full of suffering. People are sick and in pain: people have lost their homes in disasters and wars and have nothing in which to believe any longer and are suffering in their despair. For those whose belongings have all been destroyed, their refuge in the material world has been shown to be empty and meaningless. This kind of pain is always occurring all around us.

Master Tozan answered the monk, “You have to go where there is no hot and no cold!”

The monk continued, “Where is that place where there is no hot or cold? Where is that true place of refuge for the mind?”

The priest answered, “When it is hot, become that heat completely! When it is cold, become one with that cold completely and totally! When it is painful, become that pain completely and totally, and when you are miserable, become that misery totally and completely! In the very midst of that, go beyond all the thoughts you hold in your mind, let go of all the ideas of good or bad or gain or loss – let go of all of these thoughts – and from there grasp that place of your very own vivid life energy! That which directly experiences that ‘ouch’ – feel that life energy directly, grasp that life energy that feels that pain and sorrow.” More important than finding a place out of pain and suffering, or trying to find a place where there is no pain or suffering, is to go directly to that place where the pain and suffering are being experienced, to go where you feel that pain and sadness directly and totally. Touch that life energy directly and with your own experience. Use that actual direct experience which you have grasped as your base, and stand up strong and firm. This is how the master answered the monk.

Phoenix from the Ashes

Of course this advice is not just for the metaphoric physical feeling of hot and cold. We may apply it to every aspect of our lives. Especially in relationships for example where we might suffer emotional or psychological trauma.

As it’s happening, we must not deny it, but rather go into the very heart of the contraction and become as one with it – to soften into it – in the way described above. Then the bubble of identification bursts, the void of silence is touched, the soul rises like a pheonix from the ashes and a new, more harmonious reality takes shape.

Finally, the majesty of the expanded self is realized.

OPPT - The One People's Public Trust

What if the Godhead could reach down through the multi-verses and rewrite the script using the very laws once used to enslave humanity, thereby unequivocally declaring what was always true - that we are FREE in ALL WAYS in our collective Being and Doing! It might then just look like THIS:

WAKE UP WORLD

What is the One People’s Public Trust?

The One Peoples Public Trust itself consists of every person on the planet, the planet itself and the Creator.

The One People’s Trust trustees are a group of very skilled individuals including legal professionals who, in conjunction with a positive group inside the financial system, carried out extensive investigations into the massive fraud and theft taking place at the time.

They concluded that the financial and corporate government systems were committing treason against the people and after testing different approaches at correcting the injustices against humanity they saw being inflicted, they decided that that the only solution was to terminate the entire system through UCC filings.

The final report from the investigation is to be found here.

Resources

Press Releases

Disclosure Agreement – 25th December 2012
Announcement – 28th December 2012
Current State – 15th January 2013
OPPT Foreclosure on Major Corporations – 4th February 2013

Social Sites

Oppt-in – Facebook
Oppt-in – Twitter
Oppt-in – Flickr
OPPT Book – Facebook Alternative for the OPPT Community

Articles

One People’s Public Trust Lawfully Forecloses Corporations, Banks and Governments for Operating Slavery and Private Money Systems
Corporations Masquerading as Government in Australia & World Wide
Corporations Masquerading as Government (Part II): Which “Government” Can We Trust?
Further Wake Up World Articles on OPPT
Video: One People’s Public Trust Presentation
Video: 20 Reasons to OPPT in to One People’s Public Trust

Downloadable Documents

OPPT Courtesy Notice and Courtesy Notice Guidelines
UCC Filings
CVAC (CREATOR’S VALUE ASSET CENTER)
Updated OPPT UCC Financing Amendment
Network of Global Corporate Control
Operation Paradigm Final Bullet Report
SWQW Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars
Flash Mob Photo Kit

Radio Shows

Click here to listen to OPPT Radio Shows

Websites

One People’s Public Trust 1776 (Legal Documents)
oppt-in.com
Removing The Shackles
American Kubaki
Kauilapele
Lisa Harrison
Angel Lucci
FUQ: Frequently Unanswered Questions of the “Australian Government”
The OPPT Daily (Web ‘Newspaper’)
Extensive List of OPPT Websites from Around the World

For more CLICK HERE.

Inner Worlds, Outer Worlds - Parts 1-4

Excellent introduction to all that leads to awakening consciousness. Enjoy!

The Dream of Life - Alan Watts

Transcending Language and the Leap of Faith

by Zen Gardner

Don’t you love dreams, especially the trippy ones where you’re sure you were there? I just had another one, and it brought up so many significant concepts and emphasized something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

Manifesting the next level with all that is in us.

The main impact of the dream concerned communication. Not the message being conveyed, but the more than amazing power of our mode of communication. Both in how it can hamper and contain, or gloriously liberate our spirits.

Something that drastically affects the entire state of humanity.

Into the Library of Light

In the experience I was transcended into this other realm by a series of very touching dream events. It was wonderful. I was transported in that spiritual yet physical kind of way “up” into this other realm. There I was introduced to this modern looking library-ish place with glass walls, and happy people of all kinds and ages. It was hovering over a pristine planet below and filled with awake, beautiful vibrant people, some floating and some walking, with lots of children around this big room with elevated library levels and a hubbub of audibly silent, peaceful activity.

Everyone was effortlessly busy and innately knew what they were supposed to be doing; no pressure, no hurry, and communication was oh so easy and simple.

I was greeted as if I was expected and was immediately accepted and integrated as everyone just kept about their business. I pestered my beautiful “governess” of the outpost guide about contacting my loved ones left behind about what had just happened to me so they wouldn’t worry. I was clearly a novice but even that was accepted blithely and in stride and they were checking out ways of contacting them. If there was “protocol” even that was open for reconsideration.

Cool? It was. But so profoundly, openly communicative.

Conscious Communication is the Key to Conscious Empowerment

The most profound realization and insight of this experience was how everyone communicated. There were many messages and many personal details involved, but the REAL world of conscious communication is NOTHING like what we experience here. Somehow everyone who needed to know something knew it. There was no useless chatter I could “hear”, and it wasn’t silence in between like something was missing.

It was perfectly orchestrated, but naturally.

What struck me as I thought about this experience is that we are all controlled by our very manner of communication more than the content. Because in this life we have this huge buffer called our ego or false self, this mind and voice box controller, we can formulate what we want the other party to hear. This makes for a huge gap in reality and allows for all these false fabrications of projected truth vs REAL truth that we witness every day.

Hence our screwed up world of lies, phony nuances and easy deception. And anyone stupid enough to tell the honest truth gets trampled on like a bug on a city street. Here. But not there.

There Truth isn’t something to strive for, it’s a simple and glorious matter of fact way of loving, vibrant life.

To continue reading CLICK HERE.

17 Krishnamurti Quotes That Will Turn Your World View Outside In

Dylan Charles, Editor
Waking Times 

 

A sage is someone who can put into words the aspects of our mysterious nature that most of us can only feel.

At times in my life I have been overwhelmed by the world and confused about the purpose of it all. I spent much time in anguish, behaving in self-destructive ways, wondering why happiness was so elusive.

In this struggle, I passed many years looking outward for the source of turmoil in my world, trying to tweak, upgrade and replace parts of my life that seemed culpable for my sorrows; a different job, new friends, more education, better stuff. This always led me back, of course, to where I started, still confused, still unsatisfied, still searching for someone and something to blame.

Words are more than just the sum of their meaning, they are powerful incantations, capable of conjuring up great inspiration or of casting damning spells. Philosophy is something that can heal, yet no doctor can prescribe it and no one can predict which words a person must hear to break through to a better place in life.

The potent words of the great Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti fell into my life at precisely the right time, ringing true enough in my mind and in my heart to carry me to brighter days.

Until then, no other spokesman of truth had challenged me so bluntly to take personal responsibility for everything that is wrong in my life and everything that is misaligned in the world, pointing out so truthfully that the world is as we create it. None other had demanded so fervently that I look deep within for the answers to suffering, pointing out the inattention I was giving to my own life. No one else had challenged everything I thought I knew about my personal history and my culture, exposing the conditioning of my own mind, compelling me to change.

And for this I share with you these 17 Krishnamurti quotes that will turn your world view outside in, urging you to reconsider your culture religion, politics and family, guiding you towards a new awareness, intelligence and the truest freedom.

Mostly taken from his public talks in the late 1960’s, these quotes have the power to unleash us from our chains and set us free into a powerful new present where our humanity can finally reign supreme over our fearfulness.

I hope you find solace in them as I have, and that you share them with those whom you love, stirring within them the deep truths that can liberate us from the pitfalls of our own consciousness and the fabrications of our culture.

1. Our minds are conditioned – that is an obvious fact – conditioned by a particular culture or society, influenced by various impressions, by the strains and stresses of relationships, by economic, climatic, educational factors, by religious conformity and so on. Our minds are trained to accept fear and to escape, if we can, from that fear, never being able to resolve, totally and completely, the whole nature and structure of fear. So our first question is: can the mind, so heavily burdened, resolve completely, not only its conditioning, but also its fears? Because it is fear that makes us accept conditioning.

2. I wonder why we divide life into fragments, the business life, social life, family life, religious life, the life of sport and so on? Why is there this division, not only in ourselves but also socially – we they, you and me, love and hate, dying and living? I think we ought to go into this question rather deeply to find out if there is a way of life in which there is no division at all between living and dying, between the conscious and the unconscious, the business and social life, the family life and the individual life.

These divisions between nationalities, religions, classes, all this separation in oneself in which there is so much contradiction – why do we live that way? It breeds such turmoil, conflict, war; it brings about real insecurity, outwardly as well as inwardly. There is so much division, as God and the devil, the good and the bad, ‘what should be’ and ‘what is.’

3. Man has always sought immortality; he paints a picture, puts his name on it, that is a form of immortality; leaving a name behind, man always wants to leave something of himself behind. What has he got to give – apart from technical knowledge – what has he of himself to give? What is he? You and I, what are we, psychologically? You may have a bigger bank account, be cleverer than I am, or this and that; but psychologically, what are we? – a lot of words, memories, experiences, and these we want to hand over to a son, put in a book, or paint in a picture, ‘me’. The ‘me’ becomes extremely important, the ‘me’ opposed to the community, the ‘me’, wanting to identify itself, wanting to fulfill itself, wanting to become something great – you know, all the rest of it. When you observe that ‘me’, you see that it is a bundle of memories, empty words: that is what we cling to; that is the very essence of the separation between you and me, they and we.

4. How is the mind, the brain included to be completely quiet? Some say breathe properly, take deep breaths, that is, get more oxygen into your blood; a shoddy little mind breathing very deeply, day after day, can be fairly quiet; but it is still a shoddy little mind.

5. We look at conditions prevailing in the world and observe what is happening there – the student’s riots, the class prejudices, the conflict of black against white, the wars, the political confusion, the divisions caused by nationalities and religions. We are also aware of conflict, struggle, anxiety, loneliness, despair, lack of love, and fear. Why do we accept all this? Why do we accept the moral, social environment knowing very well that it is utterly immoral; knowing this for ourselves – not merely emotionally or sentimentally but looking at the world and at ourselves – why do we live this way? Why is it that our educational system does not turn out real human beings but mechanical entities trained to accept certain jobs and finally die? Education, science and religion have not solved our problems at all.

Looking at all this confusion, why does each one of us accept and conform, instead of shattering the whole process in ourselves?

6. This is a very human, ordinary problem, which touches the life of everyone of us, rich and poor, young and old, why do we live this monotonous, meaningless life, going to the office or working in a laboratory or a factory for forty years, breeding a few children, educating them in absurd ways, and then dying? I think you should ask this question with all your being, in order to find out. Then you can ask the next question: whether human beings can ever change radically, fundamentally, so that they look at the world anew with different eyes, with a different heart, no longer filled with hatred, antagonism, racial prejudices, but with a mind that is very clear, that has tremendous energy.

Seeing all this – the wars, the absurd divisions which religions have brought about, the separation between the individual and the community, the family opposed to the rest of the world, each human being clinging to some peculiar ideal, dividing himself into ‘me’ and ‘you’, ‘we’ and ‘they’ – seeing all this, both objectively and psychologically, there remains only one question, one fundamental problem and this is whether the human mind, which is so heavily conditioned, can change. Not in some future incarnation, nor at the end of life, but change radically now, so that the mind becomes new, fresh, young, innocent, unburdened, so that we may know what it means to love and to live in peace.

7. To deny conventional morality completely is to be highly moral, because what we call social morality, the morality of respectability, is utterly immoral; we are competitive, greedy, envious, seeking our own way – you know how we behave. We call this social morality; religious people talk about a different kind of morality, but their life, their whole attitude, the hierarchical structure of religious organization and belief, is immoral. To deny that is not to react, because when you react, this is another form of dissenting through one’s own resistance. But when you deny it because you understand it, there is the highest form of morality.

In the same way, to negate social morality, to negate the way we are living – our petty little lives, our shallow thinking and existence, the satisfaction at a superficial level with our accumulated things – to deny all that, not as a reaction but seeing the utter stupidity and the destructive nature of this way of living – to negate all that is to live. To see the false as the false – this seeing is the true.

8. If people who say they love their children meant it, would there be war? And would there be division of nationalities – would there be these separations?

9. If the mind is unconditioned it is free. So we are going to find out, examine very closely, what makes the mind so conditioned, what are the influences that have brought about this conditioning, and why we accept it. First of all, tradition plays an enormous part in life. In that tradition the brain has developed so that it can find physical security. One cannot live without security, that is the very first, primary animal demand, that there be physical security; one must have a house, food, clothing. But the psychological way in which we use this necessity for security brings about chaos within and without. The psyche, which is the very structure of thought, also wants to be secure inwardly, in all its relationships. Then the trouble begins. There must be physical security for everybody, not only for the few; but that physical security for everybody is denied when psychological security is sought through nations, through religions, through the family.

10. Then there is the question of dying, which we have carefully put far away from us, as something that is going to happen in the future – the future may be fifty years off or tomorrow. We are afraid of coming to an end, coming physically to an end and being separated from the things we have possessed, worked for, experienced – wife, husband, the house, the furniture, the little garden, the books and the poems we have written or hoped to write. And we are afraid to let all that go because we are the furniture, we are the picture that we possess; when we have the capacity to play the violin, we are that violin. Because we have identified ourselves with those things – we are all that and nothing else. Have you ever looked at it that way? You are the house – with the shutters, the bedroom, the furniture which you have very carefully polished for years, which you own – that is what you are. If you remove all that you are nothing.

And that is what you are afraid of – of being nothing. Isn’t it very strange how you spend forty years going to the office and when you stop doing these things you have heart trouble and die? You are the office, the files, the manager or the clerk or whatever your position is; you are that and nothing else. And you have a lot of ideas about God, goodness, truth, what society should be – that is all. Therein lies sorrow. To realize for yourself that you are that is great sorrow, but the greatest sorrow is that you do not realize it. To see that and find out what it means is to die.

11. Can you observe anything – a tree, your wife, your neighbor, the politician, the priest, a beautiful face – without any movement of the mind? The images of your wife, of your husband, of your neighbor, the knowledge of the cloud or of pleasure, all that interferes, doesn’t it? So when there is interference by an image of any kind, subtle or obvious, then there is no observation, there is no real, total awareness – there is only partial awareness. To observe clearly there must be no image coming in between the observer and the thing observed. When you look at a tree, can you look at it without the knowledge of that tree in botanical terms, or the knowledge of your pleasure or desire concerning it? Can you look at it so completely that the space between you – the observer – and the thing observed disappears? That doesn’t mean that you become the tree! But when that space disappears, there is the cessation of the observer, and only the thing which is observed remains. In that observation there is perception, seeing the thing with extraordinary vitality, its color, its shape, the beauty of the leaf or trunk; when there is not the center of the ‘me’ who is observing, you are intimately in contact with that which you observe.

12. If I think I am very beautiful and you tell me I am not, which may be a fact, do I like it? If I think I am very intelligent, very clever, and you point out that I am actually a rather silly person, it is very unpalatable to me. And your pointing out my stupidity gives you a sense of pleasure, does it not? It flatters your vanity, it shows you how clever you are. But you do not want to look at your own stupidity; you want to run away from what you are, you want to hide from yourself, you want to cover up your own emptiness, your own loneliness. So you seek out friends who never tell you what you are. You want to show others what they are; but when others show you what you are, you do not like it. You avoid that which exposes your own inner nature.

13. Real freedom is not something to be acquired, it is the outcome of intelligence. You cannot go out and buy freedom in the market. You cannot get it by reading a book, or by listening to someone talk. Freedom comes with intelligence.

But what is intelligence? Can there be intelligence when there is fear, or when the mind is conditioned? When your mind is prejudiced, or when you think you are a marvelous human being, or when you are very ambitious and want to climb the ladder of success, worldly or spiritual, can there be intelligence? When you are concerned about yourself, when you follow or worship somebody, can there be intelligence? Surely, intelligence comes when you understand and break away from all this stupidity. So you have to set about it; and the first thing is to be aware that your mind is not free. You have to observe how your mind is bound by all these things, and then there is the beginning of intelligence, which brings freedom. You have to find the answer for yourself. What is the use of someone else being free when you are not, or of someone else having food when you are hungry?

To be creative, which is to have real initiative, there must be freedom; and for freedom there must be intelligence. So you have to inquire and find out what is preventing intelligence. You have to investigate life, you have to question social values, everything, and not accept anything because you are frightened.

14. Have you ever thought about why you are being educated, why you are learning history, mathematics, geography, or what else? Have you ever thought why you go to schools and colleges? Is it information, with knowledge? What is all this so-called education? Your parents send you here, perhaps because they themselves have passed certain examinations and taken various degrees. Have you ever asked yourselves why you are here, and have the teachers asked why you are here? Do the teachers know why they are here? Should you not try to find out what all this struggle is about – this struggle to study, to pass examinations, to live in a certain place away from home and not be frightened, to play games well and so on? Should your teachers not help you to inquire into all this and not merely prepare you to pass examinations?

15. So religion becomes a matter of belief, and belief acts as a limitation on the mind; and the mind then is never free. But it is only in freedom that you can find out what is true, what is God, not through any belief; because your belief projects what you think God ought to be, what you think ought to be true. If you believe God is love, God is good, God is this or that, your very belief prevents you from understanding what is God, what is true.

16. A conditioned mind is not free because it can never go beyond its own borders, beyond the barriers it has built around itself; that is obvious. And it is very difficult for such a mind to free itself from its conditioning and go beyond, because this conditioning is imposed upon it, not only by society, but by itself. You like your conditioning because you dare not go beyond. You are frightened of what your father and mother would say, of what society and the priest would say; therefore you help to create the barriers which hold you. This is the prison in which most of us are caught, and that is why your parents are always telling you – as you in turn will tell your children – to do this and not do that.

17. Now, there are many people who will tell you the purpose of life; they will tell you what the sacred books say. Clever people will go on inventing various purposes of life. The political group will have one purpose, the religious group will have another, and so on and on. And how are you to find out what is the purpose of life when you yourself are confused? Surely, as long as you are confused, you can only receive an answer which is also confused. If your mind is disturbed, if it is not really quiet, whatever answer you receive will be through this screen of confusion, anxiety, fear; therefore the answer will be perverted. So the important thing is not to ask what is the purpose of life, but to clear away the confusion that is within you. It is like a blind man asking, “What is light?” If I try to tell him what light is, he will listen according to his blindness, according to his darkness; but from the moment he is able to see, he will never ask what is light. It is there.

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