Daily Quotes for the last three days.

Here we go with lots of reading this morning!

Saturday June 6, 2009

Silence is not built up through practice.

Disciplines, renunciations, detachments, rituals, the practice of virtue - all these, however noble, are the process of thought, and thought can only work toward an end, toward an achievement, which is ever the known. Achievement is security, the self-protective certainty of the known. To seek security in that which is nameless is to deny it. The security that may be found is only in the projection of the past, of the known. For this reason, the mind must be entirely and deeply silent; but this silence cannot be purchased through sacrifice, sublimation, or suppression. This silence comes when the mind is no longer seeking, no longer caught in the process of becoming. This silence is not cumulative, it may not be built up through practice. This silence must be as unknown to the mind as the timeless, for if the mind experiences the silence, then there is the experiencer who is the result of past experiences, who is cognizant of a past silence, and what is experienced by the exp eriencer is merely a self-projected repetition. The mind can never experience the new, and so the mind must be utterly still.

The mind can be still only when it is not experiencing, that is, when it is not terming or naming, recording or storing up in memory. This naming and recording is a constant process of the different layers of consciousness, not merely of the upper mind. But, when the superficial mind is quiet, the deeper mind can offer up its intimations. When the whole consciousness is silent and tranquil, free from all becoming - which is spontaneity - then only does the immeasurable come into being.

Commentaries on Living, Series I - 44

Sunday June 7, 2009

Truth brings freedom; freedom from thought, the result.

'Is there not something which is beyond thought, beyond time, something that is not created by the mind?'

Either you have been told about that state, have read about it, or there is the experiencing of it. The experiencing of it can never be an experience, a result; it cannot be thought about and, if it is, it is a remembrance and not experiencing. You can repeat what you have read or heard, but the word is not the thing; and the word, the very repetition, prevents the state of experiencing. That state of experiencing cannot be as long as there is thinking: thought, the result, the effect, can never know the state of experiencing.

'Then, how is thought to come to an end?'

See the truth that thought, the outcome of the known, can never be in the state of experiencing: experiencing is always the new, thinking is always of the old. See the truth of this, and truth brings freedom - freedom from thought, the result. Then there is that which is beyond consciousness, which is neither sleeping nor waking, which is nameless: it is.

Commentaries on Living, Series I - 160

Monday June 8, 2009

The mind cannot go to it.

How is the mind to allow that thing to come to it? Obviously, the mind cannot go to it; it must come, and how is it to come? You cannot invite it, you cannot make a habit of it, you cannot sacrifice yourself for it, or make yourself into this or that to get it: it must come. And, the how - in the sense of by what conduct, by what path, by what system, by what process of thinking - is not the problem. You see, to put this question seriously to yourself, you must be aware, totally, of the full implications of the question. Knowing all the habits of the mind, knowing that you can do anything now with the mind through drugs which will have no aftereffects, then surely you see that such a mind, which has been influenced, cannot possibly receive that which has no measure, which is nameless.

And yet, without that other, it is like having a perfect body, a beautiful mechanical mind, which is but an empty shell. So, how is that unknown to come? You cannot induce it, you cannot buy it through any means. It is too vast, immeasurable, and so fleeting that the mind cannot capture it. It cannot be held within the field of time.

Collected Works, Vol. XI - 82