Twelve
Can the mind be profoundly free?
There are several things we should talk over together. One of the things is
freedom. It is really a very important subject and needs a great deal of
exploration, a great deal of inquiry to see whether the mind can ever be free or is
always time-bound. Is it always limited by the past, which is time? Can the mind,
our mind, living in this world, functioning as it should—with all the daily
problems, with the many conflicting desires, opposing elements, influences, and
various contradictions that one lives in; with all the tortures, with passing joys—
ever be free, not only superficially but profoundly, at the very root of its
existence? I am sure we have asked whether people, living in this extraordinarily
complex society, having to earn a livelihood, perhaps having a family, living in
competition and acquisition, can go beyond all that, not into abstraction, not into
an idea or a formula or a concept of freedom, but actually be free. That’s what I
would like, if we may, to go into.
“Freedom from” is an abstraction, but freedom in observing what is and going
beyond it is actual freedom. We are going to go into this, but first, if I may
suggest, just listen, not accepting or denying. Just have the sensitivity to listen,
and not draw any conclusion or assume any defensive reaction or resist, or
translate what we are saying. If you will, listen, not merely to the words or the
meaning of the words, but try to comprehend the whole meaning, the inwardness
of the word freedom. We are together going to share this question, travel
together, investigate together, understand together what this freedom implies;
whether a mind—that’s your mind—the mind that has been nurtured in time, a
brain that has evolved through time, that has accumulated thousands of
experiences, that has been conditioned in various cultures, whether such a mind
can be free. Not in some utopian or religious sense of freedom, but actually
living in this confused, contradictory world, can the mind—your mind, as you
know it, as you have observed it—ever be completely free, on the surface and
deeply, inwardly?
If we don’t answer this question for ourselves, if we don’t find the truth of
this for ourselves, we shall always be living in the prison of time. Time is the
past; time is thought; time is sorrow; so unless we really see the truth of this, we
shall always live in conflict, in sorrow, in the prison of thought. I don’t know
what you think, how you regard this question. Not what your religious teachers
have said, nor the Gita, the Upanishads, your gurus, your social structure, your
economic condition, but what you think, what you say is more important than all
the books put together. That means that you yourself have to find the truth of
this. Never repeat what others have said, but find out for yourself, test it out for
yourself. Don’t test what others have said—the Gita, the Upanishads, the Bible,