Quote of the Day

Jul 5, 2023
The difficulty is that all of us have been educated wrongly, we have lost the initiative in thinking, we want to be helped, and probably most of you are here for that reason. Sirs, there is no help, and please realize this. There is no help - which does not mean that you must remain in despair. On the contrary. But the moment you begin seeking help you have lost the initiative, and initiative is the beginning of that extraordinary thing called creativity, which is truth. Remaining within the walls of your particular prison, the walls of your own thinking, your own conditioning, your own ambition and confusion, you want to be helped by an outside agency, and so you lose the initiative to jump over the wall. He who you think will give you a hand to jump over the wall you call your guru, or the one who loves you, or the truth; but if you are helped you have lost that creativity.

Life is a process of discovery, and in living from day to day you have to find out for yourself its beauty, its extraordinary depth; and it is because you do not look, because you want to be helped, that you lose the confidence, the initiative which is so essential to the process of discovery. The sense of individual discovery of what is truth is destroyed, taken away from you, so you read the Gita, you turn to Shankara, Buddha, or Christ, you follow the book or the leader, and having established authorities, you are lost. That is a simple fact. You are lost because you have leaders, philosophies, disciplines. If they did not exist, you would not be lost because then you would have to find out from day to day, from moment to moment, you would have to discover for yourself.

There is a difference between self-confidence and the state of mind which is constantly inquiring without a motive. Self-confidence breeds aggression, arrogance; its action is a self-enclosing process, but for the mind that is in a state of constant inquiry, there is no accumulation of discovery, and only such a mind can find that which is truth. The mind that is led can never discover what is truth - but only the mind that is free from society, from all conditioning, and is therefore in a state of revolution. 

That is why only the truly religious man is a revolutionary, not the reformer.
8th Public Talk | Bombay, India 1955 Read full text