Are You Aware of the Structure of Yourself? Q: What is the need of a human mind to register? The brain biologically, organically, must register. Why do we register psychologically? What is the need for survival and the urgency to exist? Is belief dangerous to physical survival? Physical survival has skipped into psychological survival. Does the gradual process of registration build up the sense of the me, the ego? What is the need for this ego, bringing such enormous pain? What is the reality of this structure that I am building? The structure is me. Seeing the structure is the observer means there is no conflict. Then there is complete energy. |
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Can One Learn Through Relationship? Q: What is learning? We learn through various events which all become knowledge. That accumulated knowledge, from which we act is always in the past. Is there a different movement which is not mechanistic? You have to start with not knowing in order to find out. Relationship with another is based on memory. When there is an image there is division which means conflict. Why does one create these images? Is it lack of attention? Can you observe this whole phenomenon of registration, learning, relationship? In that attention the whole structure is non-existent. |
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The Art of Questioning Most of us are slaves, either to religious concepts, beliefs and symbols, or to some kind of experience, to institutions, and images. One is caught in a routine, which prevents freedom. How can I understand the depth of myself without understanding how one's mind has become dependent? Do you question the way you live your life, why you think this, why you do that, why you have certain reactions, do you question the whole thing? Can I differentiate the word from the fact? How can one approach something without any knowledge? And how do I actually approach a problem? Can we find out the right way of questioning so that out of that intelligence can arise? |
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Is It Possible Never to be Hurt? Relationship is one of the most important things in life. Relationship between me and another, me with many others, which creates society. In my relationship with another there is always tension, a sense of division, of guilt, possession, protection, or responsibility all that is involved in it. Apparently there has been, from time immemorial constant conflict between you and me. Pain, attachment, jealousy, fear and great sexual pleasure, the whole of that is implied in daily relationship. Why do we accept it? Why are we hurt? Do you have an idea about yourself which can be hurt? Why do you have images about yourself, and conclusions about something or other? Do we want to find a way of living in which there is no possibility of being hurt? |
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Can You Face the Fact that You are Absolutely Nothing? There is physical fear and psychological fear. Are we aware of our fear and our reactions to that? Do we recognize our fear, and what we actually do with that fear? Do we run away from it, suppress it, control it, wait for some incident to resolve it, or accept it as part of life? Why do we wait? Why do we go through this process? I reject that anybody is going to solve my fear, Jesus or the priest or the Pope, or the Archbishop or the analyst, anyone. Can I face the fact that I am frightened, and not do a thing about it, just face it? If you face the fact then enquiries begin, real enquiries, not intellectual, verbal enquiries. You are investigating, exploring, and you understand it, have an insight into it and resolve it completely. |
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Observing Fear as it Happens When we observe - when there is division, wthen thought is in operation. When there is no observer, who is the very essence of thought which is the past, then there is only actually what is happening. Can that actuality, the fact, be observed without the movement of thought? Can you watch the moon without thought drawing a curtain across it? As long as there is division there must be conflict. Is that division actual or is it artificially created by thought? Can thought be conscious of itself as a movement? Only when there is inattention fear comes. Does attention contain or hold thought? What is the quality of the brain when there is total attention? Is there any registration at all? |
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Pain is the Reaction to Attachment One is attached to one's experience, from which there is holding on to the knowledge, the memory of it - holding on, never letting go. Can you watch that, and let the story involved in that reveal itself? Why is it we find it so difficult to remain with a fact? Now can you let the thing that you are watching, tell its story, rather than you tell it? Like a flower, when you watch it, very closely, when you see everything in its detail, the beauty of the whole thing. Can we watch attachment in the same way? Is there an observation of this happening, the actual state and the nature of it, instantly not letting thought wipe it away or distort it? |
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Can I be a Light Globally? Can we remain with the fact, without any deviation, without any interference of all the accumulated memories of the past, to observe what is taking place without thought acting as a barrier. Is it possible, to be completely, totally free from all influence, from all propaganda, tradition, superstition, every form of influence, both external and inward? Face the fact that dependence means pain, look at it. There must be freedom from the known. The known is all the memory, the past. To be a light to oneself, to stand by oneself, the past with all its tradition must totally vanish. What has been registered on the tape of the brain, that must end, and no present or future registration take place. |
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Is There an Expanding Energy? Q: What is it that flowers in human beings? A mind committed to a particular philosophy, a series of conventional beliefs and conclusions, can it flower at all? Why does the mind create the self, the prison, and then the tremendous struggle to be free of it? The total mind is in a trap; it is aware of this trap when there is pain. To escape from that pain it creates another trap. Do we realise that thought in itself, in its very seed, is limited? It may grow into a mountain but it is limited. Is insight the product of thought? Can thought, can consciousness, the totality of it be aware of itself? If there is insight, there is intelligence. Thought then has its place. Then what is it that is flowering? |
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Can I strip Myself of the Network of Lanuage? What is right action, the correct way of living? We have to enquire using words unemotionally. Is there an action totally devoid of time? Can thought find such an action? Action which is born out of insight, immediate perception, has no regrets, it is the only action. Can you have such a perception into the whole nature and structure of fear? Do you want to be free of it or do you accept it as part of life? Is the word "fear" driving you so you are caught in a network of words? Can you look at the sensation of fear without the word or is the word creating the sensation? The word is not the thing. |
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How Is One To Have Complete Order? Are we aware that we live in disorder, and is disorder different from us? Why is there this huge pressure of desire in us? Is desire one of the factors of disorder? What is the nature of desire, how does it arise, can it have its proper place without suppression or control? Perception, sensation, and then desire arises. Where does the conflict begin in the movement? Does thought create an image and pursue it? Why should the brain register an event which was painful or pleasurable? Can the brain register only that which is necessary which is to bring order? When you are alert, attentive, registration does not take place. |
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How Is Freedom To Be Understood and Lived? We always act from opposites. Psychologically is there an opposite at all? Don't opposites contain each other? Is what we call love, merely sensation? Is love pleasure, desire, or remembrance attachment to a person, country, idea? Then is love the opposite of all this or has love no opposite? Why do we rationalize sorrow, hold on to it? Passion is the quality of mind when sorrow is completely, totally understood. What does it mean to end something, the ending of time which is death? Freedom from the known is death, isn't it? |
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The Beginning of Meditation Ask what is meditation, not how to meditate, the very enquiry is the beginning of meditation. Do our senses ever act as a whole? Living, operating, thinking partially, do our senses create illusion? What place have time and control in meditation? Can one live a life without any form of control? In our daily life, what is time? Part of meditation is to find out if time can stop, whether you have the slightest sense of tomorrow. Can consciousness, with its immovable layers, which is the result of time, empty itself so that time has come to an end? When the mind is utterly without movement, in that great depth of silence, not practised, not cultivated, there may come that extraordinary sense of something immeasurable, nameless. |
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