them away. I do not know. Knowledge is the means of getting hurt and tradition
is the instrument by which I get hurt. I do not want that instrument and, therefore,
I am not hurt. I start with complete innocence. Innocence means a mind that is
incapable of being hurt.
Now, I say to myself: Why did they not see this simple fact that there is no
fixed point? Why? Why did they pile all this on the human mind so that I have to
wade through all this, in order to discard all this?
It is very interesting, sir. Why go through all this process if I have to discard
it? Why did you not tell me: Do not compare; truth is not a fixed point?
Do I flower in goodness through comparison? Can humility be gained
through time, practice? Obviously not. And yet you have insisted on practice.
Why? When you insist on practice, you think that you are going to a fixed point.
So you have deceived yourself, and you are deceiving me.
You do not say to me: You know nothing, and I know nothing; let us find out
whether all the things that human beings have imposed on other human beings
are true or false. You say: Enlightenment is something to be achieved through
time, through discipline, through the guru.
Let us find out why human beings have imposed upon human beings
something which is not true. Human beings have tortured themselves, castigated
themselves to get enlightenment—as though enlightenment were a fixed point.
And they end up blind. I think that is why, sir, the so-called man of error is much
nearer the truth than the man who practises to reach the truth. A man who
practises truth becomes impure, unchaste.
Rishi Valley
January 21, 1971