IT IS AN obvious fact that human beings demand something to worship. You and I and many others desire to have something sacred in our lives, and either we go to temples, to mosques, or to churches, or we have other symbols, images, and ideas that we worship. The necessity to worship something seems very urgent because we want to be taken out of ourselves into something greater, wider, more profound, more permanent. So we begin to invent masters, teachers, divine beings in heaven or on the earth; we devise various symbols, the cross, the crescent, and so on. If none of that is satisfactory, we speculate about what lies beyond the mind, holding that it is something sacred, something to be worshipped. That is what happens in our everyday existence, as I think most of us are well aware. There is always this effort within the field of the known, within the field of the mind, of memory, and we never seem able to break away and find something sacred that is not manufactured by the mind.
I would like, if I may, to go into this question of whether there is something really sacred, something immeasurable that cannot be fathomed by the mind. To do that, there must obviously be a revolution in our thinking, in our values. I do not mean an economic or social revolution, which is merely immature; it may superficially affect our lives, but fundamentally it is not a revolution at all. I am talking of the revolution that is brought about through self-knowledge, not through the superficial self-knowledge that is achieved by an examination of thought on the surface of the mind, but through the profound depths of self-knowledge.
Surely, one of our greatest difficulties is this fact that all our effort is within the field of recognition. We seem to function only within the limits of that which we are capable of recognizing, that is, within the field of memory; is it possible for the mind to go beyond that field?
Please, if I may suggest, observe your own mind as I am talking; because I want to go into this rather deeply, and if you merely follow the verbal explanation without applying it immediately, the explanation will have no significance whatsoever. If you listen and say, ‘I will think about it tomorrow’, then it is gone, it has no value at all; but if you give complete attention to what is being said and are capable of applying it, which means being aware of your own intellectual and emotional processes, then you will see that what I am saying has significance immediately.
YOU SEE, WE think we understand things by accumulating knowledge, by comparing. Surely we do not understand in that way. If you compare one thing with another, you are merely lost in comparison. You can understand something only when you give it your complete attention, and any form of comparison or evaluation is a distraction.
Self-knowledge, then, is not cumulative, and I think it is very important to understand that. If self-knowledge is cumulative, it is merely mechanical. It is like the knowledge of a doctor who has learned a technique and everlastingly specializes in a certain part of the body. A surgeon may be an excellent mechanic in his surgery because he has learned the technique, he has the knowledge and the gift for it, and there is the cumulative experience that helps him. But we are not talking of such cumulative experience. On the contrary, any form of cumulative knowledge destroys further discovery; but when one discovers, then perhaps one can use the cumulative technique.
Surely what I am saying is quite simple. If one is capable of studying, watching oneself, one begins to discover how cumulative memory is acting on everything one sees; one is forever evaluating, discarding or accepting, condemning or justifying, so one’s experience is always within the field of the known, of the conditioned. But without cumulative memory as a directive, most of us feel lost, we feel frightened, and so we are incapable of observing ourselves as we are. When there is the accumulative process, which is the cultivation of memory, our observation of ourselves becomes very superficial. Memory is helpful in directing, improving oneself, but in self-improvement there can never be a revolution, a radical transformation. It is only when the sense of self-improvement completely ceases, but not by volition, that there is a possibility of something transcendental, something totally new coming into being.
IF SOMEONE POINTS out the futility of repeating what others say, of depending on the evidence of others, which may be nonsense, then you must surely say, ‘I do not know.’ Now, if one can really come to that state of saying, ‘I do not know’, it indicates an extraordinary sense of humility; there is no arrogance of knowledge, there is no self-assertive answer to make an impression. When you can actually say, ‘I do not know’, which very few are capable of saying, then in that state all fear ceases, because all sense of recognition, the search into memory, has come to an end; there is no longer inquiry into the field of the known. Then comes the extraordinary thing. If you have so far followed what I am talking about, not just verbally, but if you are actually experiencing it, you will find that when you can say, ‘I do not know’, all conditioning has stopped. And what then is the state of the mind? Do you understand what I am talking about? Am I making myself clear? I think it is important for you to give a little attention to this, if you care to.
You see, we are seeking something permanent, permanent in the sense of time, something enduring, everlasting. We see that everything about us is transient, in flux—being born, withering and dying—and our search is always to establish something that will endure within the field of the known. But that which is truly sacred is beyond the measure of time, it is not to be found within the field of the known. The known operates only through thought, which is the response of memory to challenge. If I see that and I want to find out how to end thinking, what am I to do? Surely I must through self-knowledge be aware of the whole process of my thinking. I must see that every thought, however subtle, however lofty, or however ignoble, stupid, has its roots in the known, in memory. If I see that very clearly, then the mind, when confronted with an immense problem, is capable of saying, ‘I do not know’, because it has no answer. Then all the answers—of the Buddha, of the Christ, of the masters, the teachers, the gurus—have no meaning; because if they have a meaning, that meaning is born of the collection of memories that is my conditioning.
If I see the truth of all that and actually put aside all the answers, which I can do only when there is this immense humility of not-knowing, then what is the state of the mind? What is the state of the mind that says, ‘I do not know whether there is God, whether there is love’—that is, when there is no response of memory? Please don’t immediately answer the question to yourselves because if you do, your answer will be merely the recognition of what you think it should or should not be. If you say, ‘It is a state of negation’, you are comparing it with something that you already know; therefore that state in which you say, ‘I do not know’, is non-existent.
I am trying to inquire into this problem aloud so that you also can follow it through the observation of your own mind. That state in which the mind says, ‘I do not know’, is not negation. The mind has completely stopped searching, it has ceased making any movement, for it sees that any movement out of the known towards the thing it calls the unknown is only a projection of the known. The mind that is capable of saying, ‘I do not know’, is in the only state in which anything can be discovered. But the man who says, ‘I know’, the man who has studied infinitely the varieties of human experience and whose mind is burdened with information, with encyclopaedic knowledge, can he ever experience something that is not to be accumulated? He will find it extremely hard. When the mind totally puts aside all the knowledge that it has acquired, when for it there are no Buddhas, no Christs, no masters, no teachers, no religions, no quotations, when the mind is completely alone, uncontaminated—which means that the movement of the known has come to an end—it is only then that there is a possibility of a tremendous revolution, a fundamental change. Such a change is obviously necessary; and it is only the few, you and I, or X, who have brought about in themselves this revolution, who are capable of creating a new world, not the idealists, not the intellectuals, not the people who have immense knowledge, or who are doing good works. They are not the people; they are all reformers. The religious man is he who does not belong to any religion, to any nation, to any race, who is inwardly completely alone, in a state of not-knowing. And for him the blessing of the sacred comes into being.