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"Truth is a pathless land."
Man cannot come to it through any organization, through any creed, through any
dogma, priest or ritual, not through any philosophical knowledge or
psychological technique. He has to find it through the mirror of relationship,
through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation,
and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection. Man has built
in himself images as a sense of security –- religious, political, personal.
These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates
man’s thinking, his relationships, and his daily life. These images are the
causes of our problems, for they divide man from man in every relationship. His
perception of life is shaped by the concepts already established in his mind.
The content of his consciousness IS this consciousness. This content is common
to all humanity. The individuality is the name, the form, and superficial
culture he acquires from his environment. The uniqueness of the individual does
not lie in the superficial but in the total freedom from the content of
consciousness.
Freedom is not a reaction; freedom is not a choice. It is man’s pretense that
because he has choice he is free. Freedom is pure observation without motive;
freedom is without motive; freedom is not at the end of the evolution of man,
but lies in the first step of his existence. In observation one begins to
discover the lack of freedom. Freedom is found in the choice less awareness of
our daily existence.
Thought is time. Thought is born of experience and knowledge, which are
inseparable from time and the past. Time is the psychological enemy of man. Our
action is based on knowledge and therefore time, so man is always a slave to the
past. Thought is ever-limited and so we live in constant conflict and struggle.
There is no psychological evolution.
When man becomes aware of the movement of his own consciousness he will see the
division between the thinker and thought, the observer and the observed, the
experiences and the experience. He will discover that this division is an
illusion. Then only is there pure observation which is insight without any
shadow of the past. This timeless insight brings about a deep, radical mutation
in the mind.
Total negation is the essence of the positive. When there is negation of all
those things which are not love -- desire, pleasure -- then love is, with its
compassion and intelligence.
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