excerpts

Most of us think we must have ideals to entice us to change; but to me ideals are a distraction from the fact, they are merely a projection of the opposite of what we really are.

We hope that by clinging to an ideal we shall achieve a radical change; but the continuous effort to discipline, to control ourselves, only brings about endless conflict.

Surely, a radical change can come about only when there is no effort. So long as there is any sense of achieving an ideal, of bringing about a change through compulsion, there cannot be complete attention.

A person who is really concerned with transforming himself totally will have no ideals, because ideals are a distraction from the fact of what is.

When you have an ideal your mind is not looking at the actual, but at what should be, and so attention is incomplete. To bring about a fundamental change, a new way of thinking. a revolution within oneself, one must understand the necessity of total attention without any distraction ... it is total attention in which the contradictory impulses, with all their accumulative memories, completely cease.

To put it differently, what most of us are trying to do is to change through time. We think that time will give to the mind an opportunity to bring about a gradual change within itself. Being envious, we have the ideal of becoming free from envy in the future, and through time we think we shall achieve this ideal - which to me is an escape, a distraction from the actual fact.

It is true, is it not, that we generally move from the known to the known; and this is not a radical change, it is not a revolution. The ideal is still within the field of the known, and does not bring about a fundamental transformation.

The process of changing through time is based on the principle, preached by religious teachers and sacred books, "I am this, I must become that, and the change will come about in time through discipline, control".

We can see how the mind works, how it has invented various systems of discipline to control itself, but surely this process is totally false, because all forms of discipline, control, compulsion are still within the field of the known and do not contribute to a radical change. In this process of continuity, moving from yesterday through today towards tomorrow, there is no fundamental transformation.

So the problem is, can the mind come to an end without compulsion, without any form of discipline, which means that it has understood itself completely? Because that very understanding is a process of revolution.

Truth or God is something totally unknown; you may imagine, you may speculate about it, you may believe it is this or that, but it is still the unknown. The mind must come to it completely stripped of the past, free of all the things it has known; and the knowledge, after all, the accumulated memories and problems of everyday existence. So if there is really to be a radical change, a fundamental transformation, the mind must move away from the known.

The mind, being the result of the known, of time, can never bring about a radical change within itself. Any change which it brings about can only be a superficial alteration within the field of the known. There can be a fundamental change in the mind only when the mind dies, when thinking dies - which means, really, when the [chattering mind, the false] self ceases to exist.

This is not a system of philosophy to be conveyed by teaching. It is an inner experience to be lived, day in and day out, by the person who is seriously inquiring and who does not restrict himself to the mere repetition of phrases without meaning.