ND62T5 - A religious mind has no belief home
New Delhi - 4 February 1962
Public Talk 5

Audio without subtitles on YouTube. Instead, the transcript from kfoundation.org is used.

Text-only version

0:07 We have been talking about the necessity of having a new mind, a mind that is capable of meeting all the innumerable problems of life at all levels and also at the depth of one's consciousness. We have been talking of the necessity of a revolution, not an economic or social revolution but a religious revolution.
1:05 I would like, if I may, this evening, to talk about the religious mind. But before I go into that, I would like to point out - I think it is relevant - that there must be a denial of thought. We never deny, we are all yes-sayers. We accept according to our tendencies, idiosyncrasies. When we do deny, that denial is a reaction and therefore not a denial at all.
2:16 I would like to talk a little about denial, for it is important to understand that in order to pursue and find out for oneself what is the religious mind. We never deny. If you have observed yourself sufficiently carefully and seriously, you will see that we have always found an easy path, accepted the easiest solution. We have accepted tradition and various cultural, economic, social influences. We have never stood against them; or if we have stood, we have stood against them by force, not willingly, not comprehendingly. 3:36 And so our denial is always tinged with fear. It has always come about through a form of acceptance in which there is a hope. It is never a denial of not knowing what is to come; it is a denial with an acceptance of a regulated orderly future.
4:19 Please do listen to what I am saying, because when we talk about the religious mind we are going to deny the whole structure of religion as it is, totally, because it is utterly false, because it has no meaning whatsoever. And to understand what we are going to say a little later, you must, if I may point out, comprehend deeply this act of denial.
5:01 You can be forced to deny; circumstances can force you or compel you to say `no'. All circumstances such as lack of money, environmental influences, some trouble or the other can force you to say `no'. But to say `no' with clarity, without any motive, without wanting a reward, or not for fear of punishment; deliberately to say `no' to something to which you have given your thought completely, uncompromisingly; to say `no' when you have thought out the problem completely, seriously that is quite a different matter. 6:24 To say `no' seriously means to go into a problem to the very end, not romantically, not emotionally, not according to your particular idiosyncrasy of vanity, of pleasure or desire, but to go to the very end of the thing putting aside your personal fancies, myths, likes and dislikes. To go to the very end of a thought, of an idea, of a feeling is to be serious.
7:10 I would like this evening to go into this question of religion, because I feel that, if we could walk out of this tent with a very clear, strong, religious mind, we would solve our problems. Religion is something that includes everything, it is not exclusive. A religious mind has no nationality. It is not provincial; it does not belong to any particular organized group. It is not the result of ten thousand years of propaganda or two thousand years of propaganda. It has no dogma, no belief. It is a mind that moves from fact to fact. 8:33 It is a mind that understands the total quality of thought not only the obvious, superficial thought, the educated thought, but also the uneducated thought, the deep down unconscious thought and motives. When a mind enquires into the totality of something, when it realizes through that enquiry what is false, and denies it because it is false, then the totality of that denial brings about a new quality in that mind, which is religious, which is revolutionary. But for most of us religion is not merely the word, the symbol, but it is the result of our conditioning. 9:50 You are a Hindu, because you have been told from your childhood that you are a Hindu with all the superstitions, beliefs, dogmas, traditions of Hinduism, and you have all accepted what you have been told. The same thing applies when you are a Muslim, or a Christian or what you will. As the Communist accepts in his youth that there is no God, you accept that there is God. There is not much difference between you and the person who denies God; both are the result of a conditioned mind. Please, I am not attacking you; therefore, there is no need to defend yourself, you do not have to resist. 10:45 We are dealing with facts; and it would be utterly unwise to resist a fact, it has no meaning. The world is in such chaos that, even if you deliberately set about to make the world more chaotic than it is, you could not succeed - in spite of the politicians. And it needs a very sharp, clear, decisive, sane mind to resolve such a chaotic condition. I do not think such a mind can come about, except through religious perception.
11:37 Please follow the operations of your own mind - not the word, not the speaker, agreeing or disagreeing with the speaker. If you watch your own conditioning - not because I tell you but because it is a fact - when you look at that fact, when you become aware of that fact, then you can proceed to dissolve that fact, that conditioning. But first you must be aware of the fact that your mind is conditioned. When it says it is a Hindu, it is conditioned; it is shaped by the past, by centuries of culture; it is the result of a historical process and a mythological process. 13:02 The religions that you have, are the result of other people's experiences. Your religion is not your own direct experience; it is what you have been told either in some book or by some teacher, or by some philosopher; it is not something which you experience. It is only when your mind is completely unconditioned, that you can experience or discover if there is something real or not.
13:59 But before you uncondition your mind, to say that you are religious, that you are a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, or a Christian has no meaning whatsoever. That is pure romanticism which is exploited by the priest, by an organized group, political or religious, because they have a vested interest in it. These are all facts., whether you like them or not. I am merely describing the fact. These divisions into religious groups, believing in this and that, accepting this dogma and denying that dogma, going from prison to from temple to temple, doing endless puja, all that is not a religious mind at all; it is merely a traditional mind bound by fear. 15:13 And surely a mind that is afraid can never find out if there is, or if there is not, something beyond the word, beyond the measure of the mind.
15:33 Do please listen - not only listen to what the speaker is saying but also listen to the operations of your own mind. When I use the word `listen', it is not a command. I use that word 'listen' with a special significance. Listening is an art, because we do never listen. We listen half-heartedly with our thoughts elsewhere. We listen with condemnation or comparison. We listen with likes and dislikes. We listen either to agree or to disagree. We listen by comparing what we hear with what we already know. 16:55 So there is always distraction; there is never an act of listening. And it would be worthwhile if you could listen without any of these distractions of thought, so that the very act of listening is the breaking down of that condition.
17:39 When I use the word `religion', all kinds of images come to your mind; all kinds of symbols. The Christian has his own symbols, dogmas and belief. The Hindu, the Muslim, all the people who call themselves religious - they have a peculiar approach, an idiosyncratic approach. a traditional approach; so they can never think clearly about the matter. They are first Hindus or Muslims; and then they begin to seek. So to find out if there is, or if there is not, something which is beyond thought, which is not measurable by the mind, the mind must first be free. 18:50 Surely that is logic. You see, another peculiarity with religious people is that they are totally illogical. Psychologically they have no sanity. They accept without enquiry; and their enquiry is motivated by fear, by the desire for security which prevents their thought; they become romantic because it pleases them. They become devotional - it gives them a sense of joy, happiness. But that is not a religious mind at all; it is a fanciful mind; it has no reality.
19:52 If you observe your own mind, you will see how cluttered up and burdened it is with belief; and you think that belief is necessary. You use belief as a hypothesis - which is sheer nonsense. When a man is enquiring, he does not start out with a hypothesis; he has a free mind. He is not attached to any dogma and he is not bound by any fear. He starts out denying all that and then begins to seek. But you never deny for various reasons. You never deny because it would not be respectable in a respectable society - though that society is really rotten. 21:04 You never deny because you might lose your job or position. You never deny because of your family; you have to marry off your daughter, your son, to do this and that. Therefore, you are bound consciously or unconsciously, through fear, to the dogma, to the tradition in which you have been brought up. Again this is a fact; this is not my fancy. This is a psychological everyday fact.
21:47 So a mind which is bound to a belief, to a dogma, however ancient or however modern like the Communist - such a mind is incapable of bringing about an orderly world, a sane world. Such a mind is incapable of being free from sorrow, from conflict. Surely it is only the mind that is free from conflict, free from problems, free from sorrow that can find out. And you must find out because that is the only way out of this misery, this confusion that we have created in this world - the way out is not by joining innumerable groups, or by going back to the old tradition which is dead, or by following a new leader. 22:55 I do not know if you have not observed that when you follow somebody, you have destroyed your own thought, you have lost your own independence, you have lost your freedom, not only politically but, much more, psychologically, not only outwardly but, much more, inwardly.
23:30 So where there is a following and where there is a leader in matters that are really spiritual, really psychological, there is bound to be confusion, because in that there is a psychological contradiction between your own deep down urges and compulsions and the imposition upon them by the leader, by what you think you should do; and that contradiction leads to conflict; and where there is conflict, there is effort; and where there is effort, there is distortion. The religious mind has no conflict. 24:38 The religious mind does not follow anyone.
24:46 The religious mind has no authority. Authority implies imitation, authority implies conformity. And there is conformity because you want success, you want to achieve; and therefore there is fear. Without dissolving fear completely, how can you proceed to enquire, how can you proceed to find out? These are not rhetorical questions. If I am frightened, I am bound to seek comfort, shelter, security in whatever that comes along, because fear dictates - not sanity, not clarity. Fear dictates conformity, fear dictates that I must imitate, that I must follow somebody in the hope I shall find comfort. 26:06 The religious mind has no authority of any kind; and that is very difficult for people to accept, because we have been bred in authority. The Gita, the Upanishads, the Bible, the Koran and all the innumerable so-called sacred books have taken the place of our own thinking, of our own suffering; they give us comfort in illusion; they are not real at all. You make them into reality, because in them, in the dead words of others, you find comfort, in the authority of another you find light. How absurd it is really, if you examine it; and yet you are so-called-educated, sane, rational people!
27:28 Where religious matters are concerned, we become totally irrational, insane; and all these build the walls of our conditioning. Again this is a fact, a psychological, undeniable fact. You are going to the temple; you are reading the Gita and muttering a lot of words which have lost their meaning. That is not a religious mind at all. Such reading, such repetition, makes the mind dull, insensitive. There is a contradiction between daily living and what you think is real. There is no living a religious life. 28:46 You have divorced life from religion, you have divorced ethics from religion. And a mind that lives in this duality, in this contradiction, in this cleavage - such a mind is creating the world at the present time; it is bringing into the world more and more chaos. We see all this. Where there is confusion, where there is misery, people turn to authority, to tyranny - not only politically but also religiously. Gurus, teachers, ideas, beliefs, dogmas multiply and flourish, because we have never looked into ourselves deeply to find out for ourselves what is true.
30:10 The beginning of the religious mind is self-knowledge - not the knowledge of the Supreme Self; that is sheer nonsense. How can a petty mind, a narrow mind, a nationalistic mind, a mind that is begotten through fear, through compulsion, through imitation, through authority - how can that petty, shallow mind try to find out what is the Supreme Self? To seek the Supreme Self is an escape; it is pure unadulterated romanticism. The fact is: you have to understand yourself first. How can a thought which is the result of fear enquire? 31:20 How can a thought which is the result of contradiction, of sorrow, of pain, of ambition, of envy - how can that thought search out the unsearchable? Obviously, it cannot; but that is what we are doing all the time.
31:47 So, beginning to understand yourself as you are is the beginning of wisdom; and also the beginning of meditation is to see without distortion the fact of what you are, not what you think you should be. When you think, as most of you do, that you are the Supreme Self, that there is a spiritual entity in you, all that idea is the result of your past conditioning. You have to be aware of that fact and not accept that you are the Supreme Self. The idea has no meaning. What has meaning and significance is the fact of what you are every day, not what you should be. 33:20 Again the idea, the ideation, the ideal is a piece of mythology; it has no significance. The fact has significance. The fact that you are envious has significance, but not the idea that you should be in a state of non-envy.
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