The understanding of the actual is possible only when the ideal, the what should be, is erased from the mind; that is, only when the false is seen as the false.

The ideal, the what should be, does not help in understanding what is; on the contrary, it prevents understanding.

Freedom is a state of mind—not freedom from something but a sense of freedom, a freedom to doubt and question everything and, therefore, so intense, active, and vigorous that it throws away every form of dependence, slavery, conformity, and acceptance. Such freedom implies being completely alone. But can the mind brought up in a culture so dependen

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So there must be freedom from direction. Please see the logic of it, the sanity of it. There must be freedom from a conclusion. Although a conclusion may give one a great deal of energy, it is a kind of energy that is wasteful. The mind must be free of the response of thought. It must be free of ideals because they again have direction. The mind mu... See more

When you look for an authority to lead you to spirituality, you are bound automatically to build an organization around that authority. By the very creation of that organization, which, you think, will help this authority to lead you to spirituality, you are held in a cage.

Each one has contributed individually, until it has become collective, and the individual who has helped to create the collective now is lost in the collective, for it has become his mold, his environment.

Not the intelligence that is obtained from a book, or out of experience; that is not intelligence at all. Intelligence has nothing whatsoever to do with thought. Intelligence operates when the mind sees the whole, the endless whole—not my country, my problems, my little gods, my meditations. It sees the whole implication of living. And this quality... See more

When you know that you are really brutally proud or conceited, in the very consciousness of conceit it begins to dissipate, because you perceive the absurdity of it; but if you begin merely to cover it up, it creates further diseases, further false reactions.

“When there is a total understanding of need, the outward and the inner, then desire is not a torture. Then it has a quite different meaning, a significance far beyond the content of thought and it goes beyond feeling, with its emotions, myths and illusions. With the total understanding of need, not the mere quantity or the quality of it, desire th... See more