Sensitivity of mind and heart

Good morning everyone,

Here is today's quote:

You have to have this extraordinary feeling, this sensitivity to everything—to the animal, to the cat that walks across the wall, to the squalor, the dirt, the filth of human beings in poverty, in despair. You have to be sensitive—which is to feel intensely, not in any particular direction, which is not an emotion which comes and goes, but which is to be sensitive with your nerves, with your eyes, with your body, with your ears, with your voice. You have to be sensitive completely all the time. Unless you are so completely sensitive, there is no intelligence.

Intelligence comes with sensitivity and observation. Sensitivity does not come with infinite knowledge and information. You may know all the books in the world; you may have read them, devoured them; you may be familiar with every author; you may know all the things that have been said; but that does not bring intelligence. What brings intelligence is this sensitivity, a total sensitivity of your mind, conscious as well as unconscious, and of your heart with its extraordinary capacities of affection, sympathy, generosity. And with that comes this intense feeling, feeling for the leaf that falls from a tree with all its dying colours and the squalor of a filthy street—you have to be sensitive to both; you cannot be sensitive to the one and insensitive to the other. You are sensitive—not merely to the one or the other.

The Collected Works vol XIV, p 143

Here is my reflection.

This is, I think, was makes K a real yogi. To be a yogi is to move beyond the play of opposites; this is mentioned in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. One be sensitive to light and not dark is not to sensitive; it is insensitive, no matter how much sunlight affects you. It is not sensitive to be sensitive to when one is happy, but to be senstive to saddness as well. To live totally is to see the interconnectedness of the two things, and to be in this place of pure observation is equanimity. Such a person is truly free; it is the first and last freedom, as K would put it.

Best wishes

Robert