Daily Quote, Tuesday May 19, 2009.

Good morning everyone,

I would keep your umbrellas handy today if you are in Halifax! :-)

Here are my reflections/interpretation of the quote which is underneath it:

Today's quote takes us into K's idea of negative inquiry. If we want to experience the eternal, it is necessary to prepare the mind to receive it, which means observing everything in us thta is within time, that is yesterday as he puts it here. As he put it in Monday's quote, I might be the shop assistant but i aspire to own the shop tomorrow. We can't know the unknown but we can know the known. They have no relationship to each other, there is no logical step from one to the other, no progression or evolution, so one must be disolved one (the known) to make room for the other (the unknown).

The known and time disolve in self-knowledge, which is not knowledge of who we are, our "true self." That is a misconception. It is knowledge of we have become, how we have been constructed in time by thought. The true self and the eternal can easily be confused as the true self appears to indicate a self which is outside time. However, the true self is itself a creation of thought. It is, in fact, an aspect of what we could call our personality, one of the subject positions that we identify with, most commonly if we are engaged in spiritual practice. It is, as I think K shows, within the known.

The mind itself must become the unknown.

To receive the unknown, the mind itself must become the unknown. The mind is the result of the thought process, the result of time, and this thought process must come to an end. The mind cannot think of that which is eternal, timeless; therefore, the mind must be free of time, the time process of the mind must be dissolved. Only when the mind is completely free from yesterday, and is therefore not using the present as a means to the future, is it capable of receiving the eternal. That which is known has no relationship with the unknown; therefore, you cannot pray to the unknown, you cannot concentrate on the unknown, you cannot be devoted to the unknown. All that has no meaning. What has meaning is to find out how the mind operates, it is to see yourself in action.

Therefore, our concern in meditation is to know oneself not only superficially, but the whole content of the inner, hidden consciousness. Without knowing all that and being free of its conditioning, you cannot possibly go beyond the mind's limits. That is why the thought process must cease and, for this cessation, there must be knowledge of oneself. Therefore, meditation is the beginning of wisdom, which is the understanding of one's own mind and heart.

Collected Works, Vol. V - 165