Black Belt

No Division

When I and my mind are the same, there is no division between myself and my mind. The self that is envious or ambitious is exactly the same as the mind that says, ‘I must not be envious, I must be noble,’ only the mind has divided itself. Now, when I see that, what am I to do? If the mind is the product of environment, of envy, greed and conditioning, then what is it to do? Surely any movement it makes to free itself is still part of that conditioning. Any movement on the part of the mind to free itself from conditioning is an action of the self which wants to be free in order to be more happy, more at peace, nearer the right hand of God. So I see the whole of this, the ways and trickeries of the mind. Therefore the mind is quiet, it is completely still, there is no movement; and it is in that silence, in that stillness, that there is freedom from the self, from the mind itself. Surely the self exists only in the movement of the mind to gain something or to avoid something. If there is no movement of gaining or avoiding, the mind is completely quiet. Then only is there a possibility of being free from the totality of consciousness.

The totality of the self

If you have noticed the constant effort that one is consciously or unconsciously making to express oneself, to be something, either socially, morally, or economically. This entails a great deal of striving; our whole life is based on the everlasting struggle to arrive, to achieve, to become. The more we struggle, the more significant and exaggerated the self becomes, with all its limitations, fears, ambitions, frustrations. There must have been times when each one has asked themselves whether it is not possible to be totally without the self.

After all, we do have rare moments when the sense of the self is not. I am not talking of the transmutation of the self to a higher level, but of the simple cessation of the “me” with its anxieties, worries, fears – the absence of the self. One realises that such a thing is possible, and then one sets about deliberately, consciously, to eliminate the self. That is what organised religions try to do, to help each worshipper or believer to lose themselves in something greater, and thereby perhaps to experience some higher state. If you are not a so-called religious person, then you identify yourself with the State, with the country, and try to lose yourself in that identification, which gives you the feeling of greatness, of being something much larger than the petty little self. Or if we do not do that, we try to lose ourselves in social work of some kind, again with the same intention. We think that if we can forget ourselves, deny ourselves, put ourselves out of the way by dedicating our lives to something greater and more vital than ourselves, we shall perhaps experience bliss or happiness. And if we do none of these things, we hope to stop thinking about ourselves through the cultivation of virtue, through discipline, through control or through constant practice.