Returning_To_The Original Mind

I have heard:

A lady was seated on a bus with her son. She bought a single ticket. The conductor addressed the boy, "How old are you, little fellow?"

"I am four," answered the lad.

"And when will you be five?" asked the conductor.

The boy glanced at his mother, who was smiling her approval of the conversation, and said, "As soon as when I get off this bus."

He has been taught to say something but still he cannot understand the motivation. He has been taught to say 'four years-old' to ride for free, but he does not know the motivation of it, so he repeats like a parrot.

Every child is more in tune with the original mind than grownups. Look at children, playing, running around: you will not find any motivation in particular. They are enjoying, and if you ask for what, they will shrug their shoulders. It is almost impossible to communicate with grown-ups. The children simply feel it almost impossible; there exists no bridge, because the grown-up asks a very silly question: "For what?"

The grown-up lives with a certain economic mind. You do something to earn something. Children are not yet aware of this constant motivation. They don't know the language of desire, they know the language of playfulness. That's the meaning when Jesus says, "You will not be able to enter into the kingdom of God unless you are like small children." He's saying that unless you become a child again, unless you drop motivation and become playful.... Remember, work has never led anybody to God. And people who are working their path towards God will go on moving in a circle in the market-place; they will never reach Him. He is playful, and you have to be playful.

Suddenly, communion; suddenly, a bridge.

Meditate playfully, don't meditate seriously. When you go into the meditation hall, leave your serious faces where you leave your shoes. Let meditation be fun. 'Fun' is a very religious word; 'seriousness' is very irreligious. If you want to attain to the original mind, you will have to live a very non-serious, though sincere life; you will have to transform your work into play; you will have to transform all your duties into love. 'Duty' is a dirty word; of course, a four-letter word.

Avoid duty. Bring more love to function. Change your work more and more into a new energy which you can enjoy, and let your life be more of a fun, more of a laughter, and less of desire and motivation. The more you are motivated, the more you will cling to a certain mind. You have to, because the motivation can be fulfilled only by a certain mind. And if you want to drop all mind - and all minds are to be dropped - only then do you attain to your innermost nature, your spontaneity. It is totally different, a different language from desire.

Let me tell you one anecdote.

There was a case against Mulla Nasrudin in the court. After hearing the early part of the evidence in a case brought before the County Court, the judge directed that the remainder of the case should be heard 'in camera'. Mulla Nasrudin, the defendant, objected on the grounds that he did not know the meaning of the word 'in camera', but the judge over-ruled the objections, saying, "I know what it means, the defending counsel knows what it means, the prosecution knows what it means, and the jury knows what it means; now clear the Court."

This having been done, counsel for the defense asked Mulla Nasrudin, the defendant, to tell the court in his own words what had happened on the night in question. "Well," said Mulla Nasrudin, "I was walking this girl home along a country lane and we decided to take a short-cut across a field. Half-way across the field, she seemed tired, so we sat down for a rest. It was a nice summer's night and I felt a bit romantic, so I gave her a kiss, and she gave me a kiss, and I gave her a kiss, and she gave me a kiss, and ten minutes later, hi-tiddly-hi-tee."

The judge said, "Hi-tiddly-hi-tee?  What on earth does that mean?"

"Well," answered Nasrudin, "the defending counsel knows what it means, the prosecuting counsel knows what it means, and the jury knows what it means - and if you had been there with your camera, you would know what it means, too!"

Desire has its own language, motivation has its own language, and all languages are of desire and motivation - different desires. For example, Christianity has its own language for a certain desire. It is not religion. Hinduism has a language for some other desire, but it is not a religion; and so on and so forth.

The original mind has no language. You cannot reach to it by being a Hindu, a Christian, a Mohammedan, a Jaina, a Buddhist, no. These are all desires. Through them you want to attain something. They represent your greed projected.

The original mind is known when you drop all desiring, all languages, all minds. And you suddenly don't know who you are. A religious person is one who has dropped all his identity with any pattern of thinking and is simply standing there naked, alone, surrounded by existence without any dressing, without any covering of language and minds - an onion, peeled completely; emptiness has come into the hands.

TATRA DHYANAJAM ANASAYAM.

So how to attain to this original mind? Now, one of the most important problems in religion has to be understood: the original mind is free from desires, and the way to attain it is to become desireless.

A problem arises for the thinking intellect: what is primary? - whether we have to drop the desires, and then can we attain the original mind? But then the problem arises that if only the desires are dropped when the original mind is attained, then how can we drop desires before it is attained? Or, if the original mind has to be attained, then desires drop of themselves, of their own accord, as a consequence of it. Then we have to attain the original mind when desires are still there, and the original mind cannot be attained without dropping desires, so a paradox arises. But the paradox is only because your intellect divides.

In fact, the original mind and being desireless are not two things; it is just one phenomenon talked about in two ways. It is just one energy - call it desirelessness or call it the original mind - it is not two things. It happens simultaneously; this I know.

Unless the original mind is attained you cannot become absolutely desireless, but you can become ninety-nine point nine per cent desireless, and that is the way. You start understanding your desires.

Through understanding, many of them simply disappear because they are simply stupid. They have not led you anywhere except into more and more frustration. They have opened doors for hell and nothing else - more anguish, more anxiety, more pain and agony. Just look at them; they will disappear. First, desires which have led you into frustration will disappear, and then you will attain to a more keen perspective. Then you will see that desires which you have been thinking up to now, desires which have led you into pleasure, have also not led you into pleasure - because whatsoever seems to be pleasant finally, eventually, turns sour and bitter.

So pleasure seems to be a trick of desire: to trick you into pain. First the painful will drop, and then you will be able to see that the pleasure is illusory, unreal, a dream. Ninety-nine point nine per cent of desires will disappear through understanding, and then the final happens. It happens simultaneously: a hundred per cent of desires disappear, and the original mind arises in a single moment, not as cause and effect, but simultaneous, together.

It is better to use Carl Gustav Jung's term for it: synchronicity. They are not related as cause and effect. They appear together simultaneously, and that too has to be said that way because I have to use language. Otherwise they are one, two faces of the same coin. If you look through understanding, meditation, you will call it the original mind. If you look through your desires, passions, you will call it desirelessness. When you call it desirelessness it simply shows that you have been comparing it with desire; when you call it the original mind, it simply shows that you have been comparing it with the mechanical minds, but you are talking about one and the same thing.

Wherever you are, you are in a mechanical mind. Whoever you are, you are in a mechanical mind, imprisoned. Don't feel sorry for yourself. That's natural. Every child has to learn something; that creates mind. And every child has to learn ways to survive in the world; that creates the mind. Don't feel angry against your parents or against your society; that is not going to help. In love they have helped you; it was natural.

You needed a mind to survive, and every society tries to force every child because all children, as born, are wild. They have to be tamed, they have to be framed. They come frameless. It will be difficult for them to survive and live in a world where much struggle goes on, where survival is a continuous problem. They have to become efficient in certain ways to protect themselves. They have to be armoured, protected, sealed against the inimical forces in the world. They have to be taught to behave like others; they have to be taught to be imitative. The mechanical mind is created through imitation. The original mind is created by dropping imitation.

I have heard:

Three ghosts were playing cards when a fourth ghost opened the door and came in. The draft from the outside blew all the cards on the floor. The new ghost was a child ghost - very young, very new to the world of the ghosts.

One of the ghosts looked up and said, "Can't you use the keyhole like everybody else?"

Now even ghosts have to be trained: "There is no need to open the door; come through the keyhole as everybody is doing!"

That's how parents go on teaching you - imitate - and those who are great imitators are appreciated. A child who does not imitate is punished. A rebellious child is punished, an obedient child is praised.

Obedience is thought to be a great value, and rebellion a great disvalue. The whole society tries to make you obedient, forces you: through awards, through punishments, fear, appreciation, ego- enhancement. There are a thousand and one ways to force you to just imitate others, because that is the only way to give you a frame, to give you a narrowness, to give you a tamed discipline. But of course, this is at a very great cost. It had to happen, it has happened, and there was no other way. Nobody could have avoided it, and I don't see that there will ever be a possibility of avoiding it completely. More or less, it will be there.

People ask me, if I had to teach children, what would I teach them? But whatsoever you teach them will give them a mind. You can teach them rebellion, but that too will give them a mind. They will start imitating the rebellious people. Again they will be framed.

Krishnamurti has a few schools around the world to teach children so that they don't become imitators - but they become imitators all the same. They start imitating Krishnamurti. The problem is very subtle. When you teach the children not to imitate, they start imitating you; they say, "Don't imitate!" You teach them that imitation is a disvalue, and of course, you use the same means. If they imitate they are condemned; everybody looks down upon them. If they become rebellious, they are appreciated. It is the same mechanism of award and punishment, of fear and greed. They become imitation rebels, but how can a rebel be an imitator?

There is no way to avoid the mind, but there is a way to come out of it. It has to be accepted as a necessary evil of being born in a society, of being born out of parents. It is a necessary evil to be tolerated. Of course, make it as loose as possible, that's all. Make it as liquid as possible, that's all.

A good society is the society which gives you a mind, and yet keeps you alert that one day this mind has to be dropped - "This is not any ultimate value; it has to be gone through but gone beyond also.

It has to be transcended." A mind has to be given, but there is no need to give an identity with the mind. If the identity remains a little relaxed, when people are grown up they will be able to come out of it more easily, with less pain, less agony, less effort.

Whether you are rich or poor, whether you are white or black, whether you are educated or uneducated, it makes no difference; we are in the same boat: the boat of the artificial mind. And that's the problem. So you can become rich from being poor, or you can renounce your riches and can become a beggar, a Buddhist bhikkhu, a monk, but that will not change you. You will still remain in the same boat. You will simply be changing roles. You will be changing personalities, but your essence will remain confined.

I have heard:

The millionaire saw the old tramp wandering around his garden and shouted to him, "Get out of here this minute!"

The tramp said, "Look here mister, the only difference between you and me is that you are making your second million, while I'm still working on my first - not much of a difference."

The poor man, the rich man, the educated, the uneducated, the cultured, the uncultured, the civilized, the primitive, the Western, the Eastern, the Christian, the Hindu: it makes no difference.

Differences may be of some quantity, but not of quality. We are all in the mind, and the whole of religion is an effort to get beyond it.

 

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