The World as Self, Part 17: How Not to Use the Mind

See, Krishnamurti does this. He’s a very, very clever guru. Krishnamurti says to people, Now, look: there is nothing you can do to be liberated, because all your efforts in the direction of liberation are phony. They are based on your desire to boost and continue your ego, and that will never lead to liberation. All you can do, he says, is to be aware of yourself as you are without judgement. See what is. But then, if you can do that, you have no further problem. But if you try to do it, you’re in the same mess all over again.

Gurdjieff played the same game, in a different way. He said, The most important thing is self-remembering. Always, at every moment, be aware of what you’re doing. Watch yourself, constantly, and never, never be absent-minded. So, all day, you know, when you pick up the piece of paper, you realize, I am picking up this piece of paper, and I’m opening it inside, and so on. And I know I’m doing it this way, so I’m not asleep. Ordinary people, you know, pick up a piece of paper and... [laughter]. In this way, we’re really picking up the piece of paper.

So all these people are doing this, you know, watching all the time. Now, where do they land up?

I’ve told this story millions of times, really. Excuse me, but it’s very important. When they teach you—in Japanese Zen—how to use a sword, the first thing that the teacher says to the student is, Now, if you’re going to be a good soldier, you’ve got to be alert, constantly, because you never know where the attack’s going to come from. Now, you know what happens when you try to be on the alert. You think about being alert, and then you’re a hopeless prey to the enemy because you’re not alert. You’re thinking about being alert. You must be simply awake and relaxed, and then all your nerve ends are working. And wherever the attack comes from, you’re ready.

They likened this to a barrel of water. The water is just sittin’ there in the barrel. But the minute you make a hole in the barrel, the water immediately is ready to come out of that hole. So, in the same way, the mind, when it is in a proper state, is ready to respond in any direction from which the attack may come. So this man is no longer alert in the sense of taut and anxious: Which way is it going to come? See? He’s just sitting there, like a cat sits there. And the minute anything happens—meow—it’s right there, because it didn’t have to overcome any set in a direction opposite to that from which the attack comes. If you’re set for the attack to come from there, and it comes from here, you have to pull back from there and go there, but that’s too late. So you sit in the middle, and you don’t expect the attack from any particular direction.

So, in the same way, all this applies to yoga. You can be watchful. You can be concentrated. You can be alert. But all that will ever teach you is what not to do. How not to use the mind. Because it will get you into deeper and deeper and deeper binds. You have to let it happen just like you have to let yourself go to sleep. You can’t try to go to sleep. You have to let yourself digest your food. You can’t try to digest it. And, so, in the same way, you have to let yourself wake up; become liberated.

And when you find out, you see, that there isn’t any way of forcing it—that, for most people, is the only way of getting them to stop forcing it. Because they won’t believe, when you tell them in the first instance, You’ve got to do this without forcing it, they’ll say, Well, it won’t work. It won’t happen because I’m very unevolved. I’m just an ordinary human being. I’m just poor little me. And, if I don’t force it, nothing will happen. Like people who think that if they don’t struggle and strain they won’t have a bowel movement, or whatever it is. They think they’ve got to do that work in order to make it happen.

In other words, all that is based on lack of faith, not trusting life. And to get people to trust life who don’t trust it, you have to trick them. They won’t jump into the water, so you have to throw them in. And if they are very unwilling to be thrown in, they’re going to take diving lessons, you see, in which they’re going to read books about diving, they’re going to do all the preliminary exercises for diving, and they’re going to stand on the edge of the diving board and inquire whether this is the right posture until somebody comes up the side and kicks them in the butt, and they’re in the water. And it’s also with this; it really is.