Black Belt

A Man Of Truth

When you see the whole process, the cunning, extraordinary inventions, the intelligence of the self, how it covers itself up through identification, through virtue, through experience, through belief, through knowledge; when you see that the mind is moving in a circle, in a cage of its own making, what happens? When you are aware of it, fully cognizant of it, then are you not extraordinarily quiet? Not through compulsion, not through any reward, not through any fear, when you recognize that every movement of the mind is merely a form of strengthening the self, when you observe it, see it, when you are completely aware of it in action, when you come to that point, not ideologically or verbally, not through projected experiencing, but when you are actually in that state, then you will see that the mind, being utterly still, has no power of creating. Whatever the mind creates is in a circle, within the field of the self. When the mind is non-creating there is creation, which is not a recognizable process.

Reality, truth, is not to be recognized. For truth to come, belief, knowledge, experiencing, the pursuit of virtue, all this must go. The virtuous person who is conscious of pursuing virtue can never find reality. He may be a very decent person but that is entirely different from being a man of truth, a man who understands. To the man of truth, truth has come into being. A virtuous man is a righteous man, and a righteous man can never understand what is truth because virtue to him is the covering of the self, the strengthening of the self because he is pursuing virtue. When he says, ‘I must be without greed,’ the state of non-greed which he experiences only strengthens the self. That is why it is so important to be poor, not only in the things of the world but also in belief and in knowledge. A man with worldly riches or a man rich in knowledge and belief will never know anything but darkness, and will be the centre of all mischief and misery. But if you and I as individuals can see the whole working of the self, then we shall know what love is. I assure you that is the only reformation which can possibly change the world. Love is not of the self. Self cannot recognize love. You say, ‘I love,’ but in the very saying of it, in the very experiencing of it, love is not. But when you know love, self is not. When there is love, self is not.

Self-knowing

Intelligence is possible only when there is real freedom from the self, from the “me”, that is, when the mind is no longer the centre of the demand for the “more”, no longer caught up in the desire for greater, wider, more expansive experience. Intelligence is freedom from the pressure of time, because the “more” implies time, and as long as the mind is the centre of the demand for the “more”, it is the result of time. So the cultivation of the “more” is not intelligence. The understanding of this whole process is self-knowledge. When one knows oneself as one is, without an accumulating centre, out of that self-knowing comes the intelligence which can meet life; and that intelligence is creative.