How does the self or the ego come into being?

“To discover, to find out, is the creative potential in man.”

“We are concerned with inertia which is so inherent in all of us, which very few of us come upon and actually do something about. We want to go into this question of inertia, which is without the power to act, which is so inherent in all of us, deep down. This inertia is essentially the result of time. This inertia is the result of accumulation.”

“Attention flows from awareness when in that awareness there is no choice, no personal choosing, no experiencing but merely observing. And to observe you must have in the mind a great deal of space. You cannot attend if your mind is not highly sensitive, sharp, reasonable, logical, sane, healthy, without the slightest shadow of neuroticism. The mind has to explore every corner of itself, leaving no spot uncovered; because if there is a single dark corner of one’s mind which one is afraid to explore, from that springs illusion.”

“Time in the psychological realm is the enemy of man. We want the psyche to evolve, grow, expand, fulfil, turn itself into something more than what it is. We never question the validity of such a desire, of such a concept; we easily, perhaps happily, accept that the psyche can evolve, flourish, and that one day there will be peace and happiness. But actually there is no psychological evolution.”

“If you want to discover the truth in that vital process which is your own life, you will have to inquire deeply into all these things; you will have to give your mind and heart to it. You will have to think independently, clearly, without prejudice; for truth is not away from life, it is in the very movement of your daily living.”

“You are the manifestation of that vast stream of human action and reaction, the stream of consciousness, of behaviour and so on: you are of that stream. That stream has conditioned the human mind, the human brain. That stream, changing, slow at times, fast at others, deep and shallow, narrowed by both sides of the bank and breaking through the narrowness into a vast volume of water – as long as you are of that stream there is no freedom… It is only when there is the ending of that stream, the ending, not you stepping out of it and becoming something else, but the ending of it, only then is there quite a different dimension.”

“In the total maturity is the austerity. Not the austerity of ashes and sackcloth but that casual and unpremeditated indifference to the things of the world, its virtues, its gods, its respectability, its hopes and values. These must be totally denied for that austerity which comes with aloneness. No influence of society or of culture can ever touch this aloneness. But it must be there, not conjured up by the brain, which is the child of time and influence. It must come thunderingly out of nowhere. And without it, there’s no total maturity. Aloneness is a life in which all influence has come to an end. It’s this aloneness that is the essence of austerity.”

“I believe, the word ‘maya’ in Sanskrit means to measure. As long as the mind has the capacity to measure it will create illusion – naturally. So they have said that as the mind has no other capacity except to measure, therefore what it measures is illusory. That’s a philosophy that exists in India – that all the world is maya, is an illusion. So they say put up with it, forget it, your disease, your hurts, the world, the quarrels – it’s just an illusion. But really to tell a hungry man the world is a maya, illusion, means nothing at all to him. What matters is not whether the world exists or doesn’t exist, whether it be illusory or not, but the fact is there is the world – there’s you and me in battle with each other. That is a fact and to understand facts we must be in contact with them, which means to look at them without any interference of thought, as prejudice, dogma, belief, nationality.”

“There are two kinds of energies. I think they are separate. One is the energy of conflict, of division, of all the movement of thought. Thought has built outwardly a tremendous structure, technologically, socially, morally. That thought in its movement, which is time, has gathered together momentum, a tremendous vitality of force. And that energy is totally different from the energy which comes about through the understanding of the right area of thought and moving away from that area, which is the movement of meditation.”

“Ceremonies are not spiritual, nor are dogmas, nor beliefs, nor the practising of a particular system of meditation; for all these things are the outcome of a mind which is seeking security. The state of spirituality can be experienced only by a mind that has no motive, a mind that is no longer seeking; for all search is based on motive. The mind that is capable of not asking, of not seeking, of being completely nothing – only such a mind can understand that which is timeless.”