excerpts

If I want to build a bridge, I cannot reject the knowledge that has been accumulated through the centuries; that would be absurd. We are not talking of such authority.

We are talking of authority of the authority of the teacher, the guru who says he knows, and who is followed by the person who does not know and who wishes to be led to reality.

We are talking of the authority that you create in the person who says he knows God, truth, and can lead you to that reality.

So the problem is clear, is it not? We are talking of spiritual authority.

When the guru says he knows, what does it mean? It means that he has experienced God, truth, perfect peace, and all the rest of it; he knows and you do not, so you follow him, hoping to be led to that reality. That is how we create so-called spiritual authority.

Now, please follow this. What do we mean by knowing? When I say, "I know", what does that signify? I can only know something which is already over.

I can only know what has been; and when a guru says he knows, he only knows the past, what he has experienced; and what he has experienced is always static, it is a dead thing, it is not living.

Truth, God, cannot be known; you cannot know or experience it, because the moment you say, "I know, I have experienced", you don't know. [Because it's in the past.]

You can only know what has been, and what has been has no validity, it is no longer truth.

When the teacher says he will help you to reach truth, reality, he can only help you to reach something which is fixed, within the field of time.

is God, reality, truth a fixed point in time and space

We think truth, God, is a fixed point in time; it is over there, and to gain it, to travel the intervening distance and reach it, we say we must have time.

What we call reality [we think] is fixed, therefore we can make a path to it - or rather, many paths, the paths of the various religions, sects, beliefs.

But reality can never be fixed; it is immeasurable, alive, beyond time; it has no being in the terms we know.

It can only be approached when the mind has ceased to be caught within the field of time, and so no guru, no book, no system of meditation can lead you to it.

The mind must be totally free from all the past compulsions, past influences, it must be without movement, completely silent, no longer inquiring in order to be safe, in order to be happy, in order to achieve.

This is why the truly religious man has no authority, no dogma, no tradition, no belief. Tradition, belief, dogma, authority, are all within the field of time, and a mind that is caught within that field can never find that which is timeless.

To free the mind from time is an immense problem, because the mind is the result of time, it is the result of innumerable influences, memories; and can such a mind be free from the past? Until the mind is free from the past, it cannot discover what is true.

Because they are suffering, lost in their confusion, human beings go to another, hoping to find an answer, a sense of comfort, a haven of security; and they do find a haven of security, because that is their desire, but their haven of security is not God, it is not truth.

It is a thing made by the mind, put together by man, and what has been put together can be torn asunder. This is why it is very important to understand yourself. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom.

But the self, the 'me' is a very complex thing, and knowing yourself is not just a matter of reading a book, or practising some stupid form of introspection, and then saying, "I have learnt all about myself". That does not bring self-knowledge.

The ways of the self are to be discovered [on the instant] from moment to moment, not through accumulation. Observe how your mind operates, what you think, your impulses, your compulsions, your hidden motives - be aware of all that from moment to moment, and then free the mind from this curse of authority, from all the books, from all the leaders, political or otherwise, because they are just as ambitious as you are.

The ambitious, the [materially] successful, will never create the new world. The new world can be created only by the man who is free from ambition, from the desire to be successful, free from all dogmas, beliefs - which means, really, free from himself, free from his ego, his `me'.

It is only through this religious revolution, and not through the economic revolution of the Communists or the Socialists, that the new world can come into being.