Quote of the Day

Jul 24, 2023
To see something totally, whether it is a tree, or a relationship or any activity that one has, the mind must be free from all fragmentation, and the very nature of fragmentation is the centre from which one is looking. The back ground, the culture as the Catholic, as the Protestant, as the Communist, as the Socialist, as my family, is the centre from which one is looking. So as long as one is looking at life from a particular point of view, or from a particular experience which one has cherished, which is one's background, which is the 'me', one cannot see the totality. Thus it is not a question of how one is to get rid of fragmentation. One's invariable question would be 'how am I who function in fragments, not to function in fragments?' - but that is a wrong question. One sees that one is dependent psychologically on so many things and one has discovered intellectually, verbally, and through analysis, the cause of that dependence; the discovery is itself fragmentary because it is an intellectual, verbal, analytical process - which means that what ever thought investigates must inevitably be fragmentary. One can see the totality of something only when thought doesn't interfere, then one sees not verbally and not intellectually but factually, as I see the fact of this microphone, without any like or dislike, there it is. Then one sees the actuality, that one is dependent and one does not want to get rid of that dependence or to be free of its cause. One observes and one observes without any centre, without any structure of the nature of thinking. When there is observation of that kind one sees the whole picture, not just a fragment of that picture and when the mind sees the whole picture there is freedom.
Talks and Dialogues Saanen 1967 | 2nd Public Talk 11th July 1967