Total Freedom

We have examined the nature of thought. We said thought is a material process, matter, because it is stored up in the brain, part of the cell, which is matter. So thought is a material process in time, a movement. And whatever that movement creates is reality: both the neurotic as well as the so-called fragmentary, they are realities. The actual is a reality, like the microphone. And also nature is a reality. So what is truth? Can thought, which is fragmentary, which is caught up in time, mischievous, violent, all that, can that thought find truth, truth being the whole, that which is sacred, holy? And if it cannot find it, then what place - or what is the relationship of thought, of reality to that which is absolute? You understand?

You know all this demands meditation. This is real meditation, do you understand? Not the things imported into this country by the gurus. Whether consciousness, which is its content, can ever expand to include that consciousness of truth. Or this consciousness of the psyche, the 'me' with all its content has to end before the perception of what is truth. So one has to find out what is the nature of the psyche. Do you understand? Which has been put together by thought. What is me, to which one clings so desperately? The vanity, the arrogance, the desire to achieve, to become successful, you know, be somebody. What is this, the nature of it? How has it come about? Because if that exists the other cannot be. You understand? If I am egotistic, in its total sense, not in parts, the fragmentary sense, totally, because one is totally self-centred. You may pretend but as long as that psychic centre exits truth cannot possibly be, because truth is the whole and so on and so on.

So how is the mind, the mind being all the senses, the emotions, the memories, the prejudices, the principles, the ideals, memories, experiences, the totality of that, which is the psyche, which is the 'me', how is that to end and yet behave in a world which is now? You understand? Is that possible? To find that out I must - one must go very deeply into the question of fear, the very complex problem of pleasure, because pleasure is very complex, fear is fairly simple, pleasure is what one demands. And the question of sorrow; whether sorrow can ever end. Man has lived with sorrow for millennia upon millennia. He hasn't been able to end it. And one must also go into the question of what is death. Because all - and love - all that is the matrix of the 'me'. So this is a very, very serious affair. It is not just a thing to be played with. One must give one's whole life to understand this. To live in this world completely, sanely without the psyche - you understand - not escape, not go off into some monastery or commune, or this or the other, but to live here, in this mad, insane, murderous world where there is so much corruption, where politics are divorced from ethics and therefore there is corruption. To live in this world sanely, without the psyche, the 'me'. Do you understand? This is a tremendous question. That requires a mind that is capable, can think meticulously, correctly, objectively, having all your senses fully awakened, not drugged by alcohol, speed and all the rest of it. Do you understand what all this means? You must have a very healthy mind. And when it is drugged you haven't got a healthy mind - or smoking, drinking, all this destroys the mind, makes the mind dull.
J.Krishnamurti