If people who say they love their children meant it, would there be war? And would there be division of nationalities – would there be these separations?
Tradition, long conditioned thinking, can bring about a fixation, a concept that one readily accepts, perhaps not with a great deal of thought.
Thought comes to an end. Then there is that sense of absolute silence in the brain. All the movement of thought has ended.
We all place ourselves at various levels, and we are constantly falling from these heights. It is the falls we are ashamed of. Self-esteem is the cause of our shame, of our fall. It is this self-esteem that must be understood, and not the fall.
Imagination builds the image of the self, and thought then functions within its shadows. From this self-concept grows the conflict between what is and what should be, the conflict in duality.
But inwardly we are as corrupt as the person who sits in an office and plans war-because, we want to be somebody in the family, in a group, in society, in the nation.
After all, conflict arises, does it not, through the desire to be something, to be other than what is.
When inquiry is suppressed by previous knowledge, or by the authority and experience of another, then learning becomes mere imitation, and imitation causes a human being to repeat what is learned without experiencing it.
You are this, which does not satisfy, so you want to be that. If there were an understanding of this, would that come into being? Because you do not understand this, you create that, hoping through that to understand or to escape from this.
I have only one purpose: to make people free, to urge them towards freedom, to help them to break away from all limitations, for that alone will give them eternal happiness, will give them the unconditional realization of Self.
Knowing the cause of something is not going to help you to be free of it.
You can look only when the mind is completely quiet.
Despair exists only when there is hope.
And the idea of ourselves is our escape from the fact of what we really are.
To follow implies not only the denying of one’s own clarity, investigation, integrity, and honesty, but it also implies that your motive in following is a reward.
The very urge to get rid of desire is still desire, is it not?
Freedom is entirely different from revolt. There is no such thing as doing right or wrong when there is freedom. You are free and from that centre you act.
We are very defensive, and therefore aggressive, when we hold on to a particular belief, a dogmas, or when we worship our particular nationality, with the rag that is called the flag.
In the denial of disorder there is order.
Acquiring knowledge is a form of imitation.