Increasing Energy

When you reject something false, that is, looking to another to help you, and also when you have no longer the authority of your particular little experience - when you reject all that - what takes place? First of all, can you reject it? - which means you are no longer afraid. When you reject something false, which you have been carrying about with you for generations, when you throw off a burden of any kind, what takes place? You have more energy haven`t you? You have more capacity, you have more drive, you have greater intensity, vitality. Now does that actually take place? - if it doesn't, you have not thrown off the dead weight of authority. And when you have this energy - in which there is no fear at all, the fear of making a mistake, of not doing right or doing wrong - then is not that energy itself the mutation? One needs a great deal of energy, yet we dissipate energy through fear - through the fear of not achieving, not being successful outwardly, or the psychological fears, the fears that are caused by acceptance, by obedience. Fear dissipates energy and when we see that, - not theoretically or verbally, but actually see that as a danger, - then you have the energy. Then when there is that energy, - which has thrown off every form of fear - that energy itself produces the radical revolution. You don't have to do a thing about it. - Freedom From The Known Chapter 1

Living in Peace

Contradiction exists when there is comparison; not only with something, but also comparison with what I was yesterday. And hence conflict arises between what has been and what is. There is only what is when there is no comparison at all - and to live completely with `what is', is to be peaceful. Because then you can give your whole attention to `what is' without any distraction to what is within oneself, whatever it be - despair, ugliness, brutality, fear, anxiety, loneliness, and live with, what is, completely. Then there is no contradiction and hence no conflict. The understanding that comes only through observation of what is, is peace; which doesn't mean that you accept what is, on the contrary, one can't possibly accept this monstrous, corrupt society in which one lives, yet it is what is. But observe it, all its psychological structure, which is me, observe that me without any judgment, any evaluation - to see actually what is and as one observes the `what is', be changed completely. Therefore one can live at peace with one's wife or husband, with one's neighbour, with society, because one is oneself, daily, living a life of peace. - Collected Works Collected Works, Volume 4

Understanding

Question: Is there, or is there not, a Divine Plan? What is the sense of our striving if there is not one? Krishnamurti: Why do we strive? And what are we striving after? What would happen if we did not strive? Would we stagnate and decay? What is this constant striving to be something? What does this strife, this effort, indicate? And, does understanding come through effort, through striving? One is constantly striving to become better, to change oneself, to fit oneself to a certain pattern, to become something - from the clerk to the manager, from the manager to the divine. And, does this striving bring understanding? I think the question of effort should really be understood. What is it that is making the effort, and what do we mean by "the will to be"? We make an effort, do we not?, in order to achieve a result, in order to become better, in order to be more virtuous, or less of Something else. There is this constant battle going on in us between positive and negative desires, one superseding the other, one desire controlling the other - only we call it the higher and the lower self. But, obviously, it is still desire. You can place it at any level, and give it a different name; it is still desire, a craving to be something. There is also the constant strife within oneself and with others, with society. Now, does this conflict of desires bring understanding? Does the conflict of opposites, the want and the non-want, bring clarification? And is there understanding in the struggle to approximate ourselves to an idea? So, the problem is not the strife, the struggle, or what would happen if we did not struggle, if we did not make an effort, if we did not strive to be something, psychologically as well as outwardly; the problem is, how does understanding come into being? Because, when once there is understanding, there is no strife. What you understand, of that you are free. How does understanding come into being? I do not know if you have ever noticed that the more you struggle to understand, the less you understand any problem. But, the moment you cease to struggle and let the problem tell you the whole story, give all its significance - then there is understanding; which means, obviously, that to understand, the mind must be quiet. The mind must be choicelessly, passively, aware; and in that state, there is understanding of the many problems of our life. The questioner wants to know if there is, or if there is not, a Divine Plan. I do not know what you mean by a "Divine Plan." But we do know, do we not?, that we are in sorrow, that we are in confusion, that confusion and sorrow are ever on the increase, socially, psychologically, individually and collectively. It is what we have made of this world. Whether there is a Divine Plan or not, is not important at all. But what is important is, to understand the confusion in which we live, outwardly as well as inwardly. And to understand that confusion, we must begin, obviously, with ourselves - because we are confusion; it is we who have produced this outward confusion in the world. And to clear up that confusion, we must begin with ourselves; because, what we are, the world is. - London 4th Public Talk 23rd October 1949

Choiceless Awareness

The internal dialogue is always commenting and judging and planning. It contains a lot of thoughts of self, a lot of self-consciousness. It blocks the light of our natural wisdom; it limits our seeing who we are; it makes a lot of noise and attracts our attention to a fraction of the reality in which we exist. But when the awareness is one-pointedly focused on the coming and going of the breath, all other aspects of the mind/body process come automatically, clearly into focus as they arise. Meditation puts us into direct contact - which means direct experience - with more of who we are.

For instance, if we watch the mind as though it were a film projected on a screen, as concentration deepens, it may go into a kind of slow motion allowing us to see more what is happening. This then deepens our awareness and further allows us to observe the film almost frame by frame, to discover how one thought leads imperceptively to the next. We see how thoughts we took to be"me" or "mine" are just an ongoing process. This perspective helps break our deep identification with seeming solid reality of the movie of the mind. As we become less engrossed in the melodrama, we see it's just flow, and can watch it all as it passes. We are not even drawn into the action by the passing of a judgmental comment or an agitated moment of impatience.

When we simply see-moment to moment-what's occurring, observing without judgment or preference, we don't get lost thinking, "I prefer this moment to that moment, I prefer this pleasant thought to that pain in my knee".As we begin developing this choiceless awareness, what starts coming within the field of awareness is quite remarkable: we start seeing the root from which thought arises. We see intention, out of which action comes. We observe the natural process of mind and discover how much of what we so treasured to be ourselves is essentially impersonal phenomena passing by.

We discover we don't really need to ask anyone any questions, we needn't look outside ourselves for the answer. As we penetrate the flow, the flow is the answer. The asking of the question is itself the answer. When we ask, "Who am I?" who we are is the processes asking the question.

By not being addicted to thinking, we discover that we usually notice only a bit of the extraordinary activity of consciousness; attachment to thinking has blocked the rest. Thinking mind is quite other than the choiceless, open awareness that allows everything to unfold as it must. Thinking is choosing thoughts, it's working, it's measuring, it's planning, it's creating a reality instead of directly experiencing what's actually happening each moment.

When we attent to ongoing mind we see that even "the watcher" becomes part of the flow. The who that's asking "Who's watching?" is another thought-flash we see go by; there's "no one" watching, there's just awareness. When the "I" becomes just something else observed in the flow we see we're not different from anything else in the universe. The true nature of being becomes apparent because there's nothing to remain separate, nothing to block our totality. We see that what moves on thought into another is the exact same energy that moves the stars across the sky. No difference. We are natural phenomenon as full of change as the ocean or the wind, a product of conditions.

We see that the nature of consciousness works a bit like the hand of God in the famous Sistine Chapel painting which reaching out to give life to a waiting being, a being about to receive the spark. Moment to moment we're receiving the spark. That spark is consciousness, the knowing faculty, the perception of which arises from the contact of awareness and its object; from sight and the tree seen, from hearing and the music heard, from touch and the earth felt, from taste and the water tasted, from smell and the flower smelled, from thought and ideas imagined. Moment to moment, consciousness arises anew in conjunction with each object of the senses, including the minds sense of imagination and memory. This the arising and passing away of all that we know of our life experience. For mindfulness to enter this process is to discover genesis moment to moment, the continual creation of the universe.

Interestingly enough, it is this act of creation which is the greatest cause of misunderstanding in our life. Or to be ore precise, it is our identification with this ongoing process as "I" which becomes the problem. It is the wrong view of this natural unfolding which forms the basis for most of our drowsy blindness and illusion. Consciousness results automatically from the contact of awareness and its object. This "knowing" is the result of a natural process which exists of itself without necessity of a "knower," or any added "I" which somehow supposes responsibility for this essentially non-personal process. This interposed "I" keeps us from participating in the direct experience of this flow, the direct experience of the universal nature of our being.

Aurobindo said, "to be fully is to be all that is." Experiences come and go. If we identify with them, claim them as me or "mine" by judging or clinging, if we stick to any part of the ongoing flow we don't see that what we call "me" is constantly being born and dying, it is a process of awareness and object coming into being and passing away hundreds of times each minute.

As awareness more deeply penetrates the flow, we experience that our natural condition, our natural state of being which some call the wisdom-mind or Buddha nature, is like the sun which always shining, always present, though often obscured. We are blocked from our natural light by the clouds of thought an longing and fear; the overcast of the conditioned mind; the hurricane of "I am".

Stephen Levine ~ A Gradual Awakening, (Awareness, pp.2-6)

The Religious Man

Society is not changed by example. Society may reform itself, it may bring about certain changes through political or economic revolution, but only the religious man can create a fundamental transformation in society; and the religious man is not he who practices starvation as an example to impress society. The religious man is not concerned with society at all, because society is based on acquisitiveness, envy, greed, ambition, fear. That is, mere reformation of the pattern of society only alters the surface, it brings about a more respectable form of ambition. Whereas, the truly religious man is totally outside of society, because he is not ambitious, he has no envy, he is not following any ritual, dogma or belief; and it is only such a man who can fundamentally transform society, not the reformer. The man who sets out to be an example merely breeds conflict, strengthens fear, and brings about various forms of tyranny. It is very strange how we worship examples, idols. We don't want that which is pure, true in itself; we want interpreters, examples, masters, gurus, as a medium through which to attain something - which is all sheer nonsense, and is used to exploit people. If each one of us could think clearly from the very beginning, or re-educate ourselves to think clearly, then all these examples, masters, gurus, systems, would be absolutely unnecessary, which they are anyhow. - Madras 2nd Public Talk 15th January 1956

... psychologically, inwardly, are we aware of our responses? Are we aware when we are not telling the truth, when we are indulging in double talk, when we are saying one thing and doing something else, when we are quoting others? You follow, this whole phenomenon of being secondhand, which is to be traditional, which is to conform - conform to an example. That gentleman yesterday said, "There is a perfect example". And why do we need an example? Is that not conformity, in that is there not imitation, fear, and authority and following? All that is traditional. We have had thousands of examples - right? And we want to be that. And in that there is the acceptance, non-verbally, essentially, of authority. Tradition implies authority, conformity, imitation, following. - Saanen 4th Public Dialogue 3rd August 1974