To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion. It is only in that state that one learns and observes. And for this, a great deal of awareness is required, actual awareness of what is going on inside yourself, without correcting it or telling it what it should or should not be, because the moment you correct it you have established another authority, a censor.Collection: Passion
If people are foolish, they are bound to mix the personality and the Truth, and to build a temple around the personality and form a religion.Collection: People
Relationship is action, is it not? Action has meaning only in relationship; without understanding relationship, action on any level will only breed conflict. The understanding of relationship is infinitely more important than the search for any plan of action. The ideology, the pattern for action, prevents action. Action based on ideology hinders the understanding of relationship between man and man.Collection: Understanding
Learning implies a mind that doesn't know.Collection: Mind
Surely, it is only when the mind is creatively empty that it is capable of finding out whether there is an ultimate reality or not. But, the mind is never creatively empty; it is always acquiring, always gathering, living on the past or in the future, or trying to be focused in the immediate present: it is never in that state of creativeness in which a new thing can take place. As the mind is a result of time, it cannot possibly understand that which is timeless, eternal.Collection: Past
You are Christians; find out what is true and false in Christianity - and you will then find out what is true. Find out what is true and false in your environment with all its oppressions and cruelties, and then you will find out what is true. Why do you want philosophies?Collection: Love
Love is a state of being, and in that state, the 'me', with its identifications, anxieties, and possessions is absent. Love cannot be, as long as the activities of the self, of the 'me', whether conscious or unconscious, continue to exist.Collection: Love Is
After all you grow by experience. But while your son is young, you should try to set before him his ultimate goal.Collection: Son
Meditation is the movement of love. It isn't the love of the one or of the many. It is like water that anyone can drink out of any jar.Collection: Spiritual
We are asking a really fundamental question whether thought can ever be creative. If thought is not the ground of creation then what is creation? Is love the only factor that is creative?Collection: Creativity
What is of great importance is that everyone should concern himself with what I am saying, rather than with the personality of the Teacher, the body of the Teacher, where He dwells, and so on. That will lead to confusion.Collection: Teacher
Is not virtue a negation of becoming?Collection: Attachment
We are very defensive, and therefore aggressive, when we hold on to a particular belief, a dogmas, or when we worship our particular nationality, with the rag that is called the flag.Collection: Rags
The reality is that I am the Teacher.Collection: Teacher
How can one be compassionate if you belong to any religion, follow any guru, believe in something, believe in your scriptures, and so on, attached to a conclusion? When you accept your guru, you have come to a conclusion, or when you strongly believe in god or in a saviour, this or that, can there be compassion? You may do social work, help the poor out of pity, out of sympathy, out of charity, but is all that love and compassion?Collection: Believe
To learn about oneself, a living thing, you have to watch, learn anew each minute.Collection: Spiritual
Only when your hearts are empty of the things of the mind, is there love. Then you will know what it is to love without separation, without distance, without time, without fear.Collection: Distance
Beyond all explanations which a good brain can give, why do we choose the worse and not the better, why hate rather than love, why greed and not generosity, why self-centred activity and not open total action? Why be mean when there are soaring mountains and flashing streams? Why jealousy and not love? Why?Collection: Hate
Thought comes to an end. Then there is that sense of absolute silence in the brain. All the movement of thought has ended.Collection: Silence
There is no partial sensitivity; either it is the state of one's whole being, total consciousness or it is not there at allCollection: Consciousness
Contentment is not happiness. Contentment is stagnation and decay, whereas happiness is life and growth.Collection: Growth
The origin is nameless; the origin is absolutely quiet, it is not whirring about making noise. Creation is something that is most holy, that is the most sacred thing in life, and if you have made a mess of your life, change it. Change it today, not tomorrow. If you are uncertain, find out why and be certain. If your thinking is not straight, think straight, logically, Unless all that is prepared, all that is settled, you cannot enter into this world, into the world of creation.Collection: Life Changing
There is no tranquility in ideas.Collection: Thinking
When you identify yourself with a group of people or a set of ideas, aren't you separating yourself?Collection: Ideas
The earth doesn't belong to anyone. It is the land upon which all of us are to live for many years, ploughing, reaping and destroying. You are always a guest on this earth and have the austerity of a guest. Austerity is far deeper than owning only a few things. The very word austerity has been spoilt by the monks, by the sannyasis, by the hermits. Sitting on that high hill alone in the solitude of many things, many rocks and little animals and ants, that word has no meaning.Collection: Spiritual
It is utterly and irrevocably possible to empty all hurts and therefore to love, to have compassion. To have compassion means to have passion for all things, not just between two people, but for all human beings, for all things of the earth, the animals, the trees - everything the earth contains. When we have such compassion we will not despoil the earth as we are doing now and we will have no wars.Collection: Life
[on the secret to a happy, content life] Do you want to know what my secret is? I don’t mind what happens.Collection: Secret
In our relationship with children and young people, we are not dealing with mechanical devices that can be quickly repaired, but with living beings who are impressionable, volatile, sensitive, afraid, affectionate; and to deal with them we have to have great understanding, the strength of patience and love.Collection: Love
Do not repeat after me words that you do not understand. Do not merely put on a mask of my ideas, for it will be an illusion and you will thereby deceive yourself.Collection: Ideas
Freedom comes with self-knowledge, when the mind goes above and beyond the hindrances it has created for itself.Collection: Spiritual
If you lose touch with nature you lose touch with humanity. If there's no relationship with nature then you become a killer; then you kill baby seals, whales, dolphins, and man either for gain, for "sport," for food, or for knowledge. Then nature is frightened of you, withdrawing its beauty. You may take long walks in the woods or camp in lovely places but you are a killer and so lose their friendship. You probably are not related to anything to your wife or your husband.Collection: Love
Life behind all form is one, the expressions of that life are not of very great importance.Collection: Expression
The beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is.Collection: Meditation
Meditation is like the breeze that comes in when you leave the window open; but if you deliberately keep it open, deliberately invite it to come, it will never appear.Collection: Meditation
The real student is studying, learning, inquiring, exploring, not just until he is twenty or twenty-five, but throughout life.Collection: Real
Only in Relationship can you know yourself, not in abstraction and certainly not in isolation. The movement of behavior is the sure guide to yourself. It's the mirror of your consciousness; this mirror will reveal its content, the images, the attachments, the fears, the loneliness, the joy and sorrow. Poverty lies in running away from this, either in its sublimations or its identities.Collection: Love
How is the mind which functions on knowledge how is the brain which is recording all the time to end, to see the importance of recording and not let it move in any other direction? Very simply: you insult me, you hurt me, by word, gesture, by an actual act; that leaves a mark on the brain which is memory. That memory is knowledge, that knowledge is going to interfere in my meeting you next time obviously.Collection: Hurt
A conditioned mind may be inventive; it may think up new ideas, new phrases, new gadgets; it may build a dam, plan a new society, and all the rest of it; but that is not creativity. Creativity is something much more than the mere capacity to acquire a technique. It is because this extraordinary thing called creativity is not in most of us that we are so shallow, empty, insufficient. And only the mind that is free can be creative.Collection: Creativity
Are you trying to grasp the quality of intelligence, compassion, the immense sense of beauty, the perfume of love and that truth which has no path to it?Collection: Compassion
The significance of life is living.Collection: Life Is
We want the children to conform; we want to control their minds, to shape their conduct, their way of living, so that they will fit into the pattern of society, That is what every parent wants, is it not? And that is exactly what is happening, whether it be in America or in Europe, in Russia or in India. The pattern may vary slightly, but they all want the child to conform.Collection: Children
Introspection is self-improvement and therefore introspection is self-centeredness. Awareness is not self-improvement. On the contrary, it is the ending of the self, of the “I,” with all its peculiar idiosyncrasies, memories, demands, and pursuits. In introspection there is identification and condemnation. In awareness there is no condemnation or identification; therefore, there is no self-improvement. There is a vast difference between the two.Collection: Memories
We demand to be coaxed and comforted, to be encouraged and gratified, so we choose a teacher who will give us what we crave for. We do not search out reality, but go after gratification and sensation.Collection: Teacher
Meditation is the process of understanding your own mind.Collection: Spiritual
The fact is one thing and the idea about the fact is another.Collection: Ideas
It is only when the mind is free from the old that it meets everything anew, and in that there is joy.Collection: Joy
Control exists only when there is action of will, positively or negatively. Will is resistance. When the mind is learning, there is no resistance.Collection: Mind
If you realize that the ultimate happiness for all depends not on disorder of the emotions for either sex, but in harmonizing the emotions, all the problems will vanish.Collection: Sex
Knowing the cause of something is not going to help you to be free of it.Collection: Knowing