believe in God, and there are millions of people conditioned not to believe in
God. Both are conditioned, you who believe in God and the person who doesn’t
believe in God. They are conditioned and you are conditioned, and you can never
find out what truth is if you are conditioned. You must drop your belief to find
out. So the question is, Are you your mind? Aren’t you? What you think, you are.
When you think you are a Sikh, a Buddhist, a Christian, a Catholic, a communist,
you are that. When you think that you will achieve heaven, that is your idea,
which is you. So why do you separate yourself from what you are? Please follow
this very carefully—why? Why do you think you are different?
Q: You say that when the mind ceases, nothing remains.
K: “When the mind ceases, nothing remains,” is that it? The speaker is supposed
to have said that when the mind ceases, nothing remains. Did the speaker say
that? I am afraid I didn’t say that.
Q: Do you believe that there is anything beyond man?
K: You know, the speaker has been saying don’t believe, find out, examine,
discover for yourself, and at the end of an hour and a quarter you ask the speaker,
“Do you believe?” That is what I mean, sir. You want beliefs and you think you
have solved the problem by having beliefs. You believe that there is something
beyond. You don’t know a thing about it, but you believe. You assume
something real, accept something as being real, about which you know absolutely
nothing. How can a confused mind, a mind in sorrow, a mind that is bitter, angry
find out if there is something beyond? But you believe readily because that is one
of your escapes, about which you can quarrel endlessly.
Q: Would you share with us your understanding of what you call creative reality
and its relation to choiceless awareness?
K: Yes, sir, I am coming to it, and it is related to choiceless awareness. What do I
call reality? Sir, reality is not an opinion. It is not through opinions that you come
to reality; it is not through beliefs that you come to reality. The mind must be
completely empty to discover what reality is. And you cannot share when your
mind is not equally intense, passionate, free to look. How can you share
something of which you know nothing? But what we do know, together, is
confusion, sorrow, our petty lives. Instead of understanding that, freeing our
minds from all that, we want to know what truth is. The truth is where you are;
when the mind is free from conflict, truth is there for you to see it.
Q: I see the fact that my mind is fragmented as the observer and the observed.
But I cannot see any way by which the two can come together.
K: The questioner says, “I see that my mind is fragmented; I see very clearly that
there is a division. There is the observer and the observed, and there is conflict.