put a distance, a block between myself and that state and say: If that were true,
thought would not arise.
K: I perceive something that is extraordinary, something that is true; I want to
perpetuate that perception, to give it a continuity so that that perception continues
throughout my daily life. I think that is where the mistake lies. The mind has seen
something true. That is enough. That mind is a clear, innocent mind which has
not been hurt. Thought wants to carry on that perception right through daily life.
The mind has seen something very clearly. Leave it there. The next step, the
leaving of it, is the final step. Because my mind is already fresh to take the next,
the final step in the daily movement of life, it does not carry over; the perception
has not become knowledge.
P: The self as the agent in relation to thought and in relation to seeing has to
cease.
K: Die to the thought that is true. Otherwise it becomes memory, which then
becomes thought, and thought asks: How am I to perpetuate that state? If the
mind sees clearly, and it can only see clearly when the seeing is the ending of it,
then the mind can start a movement where the first step is the last step. In this
there is no process involved at all; there is no element of time. Time enters when,
having seen it clearly, having perceived it, there is a carrying over and an
applying of it to the next incident.
P: The carrying over is the not-seeing or the not-perceiving.
K: So, all the traditional approaches which offer a process must have a point, a
conclusion, a finality. It is like saying that there are many roads to the station.
The station then is a fixed point. But anything that has a finality—a final point—
is not a living thing at all. Is truth a finality? Does it mean that once I am on the
train, nothing can happen to me, that the train will carry me to my destination?
That is, having once achieved truth, is everything else—your anxieties, your
fears and so on—over? Or, does it work in a totally different way?
A process implies a fixed point. Systems, methods, practices all offer a fixed
point, and promise man that when he achieves the end all his troubles will be
over. Is there something which is really timeless? A fixed point is in time. It is in
time because you have postulated it, because it has been thought over; and the
thinking is time. Can one come upon this thing which must have no time, no
process, no system, no method, no way?
Can this mind which is so conditioned horizontally, knowing that it lives
horizontally, perceive that which is neither horizontal nor vertical? Can it
perceive for an instant? Can it perceive that the seeing has cleansed, and end it?
In this is the first and the last step, because the mind has seen anew.
Your question: Is such a mind ever free of trouble? is a wrong question.
When you put that question, you are still thinking in terms of finality, you have
already come to a conclusion, and so are back again in the horizontal process.