Religion is the cessation of the “me”

Good morning everyone,

As if right on cue after last night's study group discussion, here is today's quote:

Have we shared this together? Because it is your life, not my life. It is your life of sorrow, of tragedy, of confusion, guilt, reward, punishment. All that is your life. If you are serious you have tried to untangle all this. You have read some book, or followed a teacher, or listened to somebody, but the problem remains. These problems will exist as long as the human mind moves within the field of the activity of the self; that activity of the self must create more and more and more problems. When you observe, when you become extraordinarily aware of this activity of the self, then the mind becomes extraordinarily quiet, sane, healthy, holy. And from that silence our life in everyday activity is transformed. Religion is the cessation of the “me”, and action born of that silence. That life is a sacred life full of meaning.

This Light in Oneself, p 77

Here is my reflection.

What is sacred can never be interpreted and given to us by another. K makes it clear that there has been a falling away from Religion in the sense that this is the gathering together of all energy at all levels to bring about great attention in which there is no frontier in order to understand what thought can never capture.

Religion and to be relgious is not to join a religion, to be a Hindu, a Christian or a Muslim. It is to see the singularly, the sacredness, in all things; to look without the past and pre-conceptions, to be without the comfort of memory and projection. It is to be unconditionally free to the need to relate the looking to the me.

Religion today, like yoga, has be entertainment, the repetition of rituals, a way of putting onself to sleep. It is about pleasure; the joy has been sucked out by the need of the me. As K points out, as soon as anything becomes organised, it becomes totally superficial; it is about maintaining itself rather than deep attention to the activity of the self. Don't we spend all our time really, organising our sense of "me"?

Best wishes

Robert